Amarinder Singh on Saturday announced an initiative to further strengthen the state’s law enforcement apparatus, with deployment of dedicated district technical units, along with district narcotic units, social media units, forensic units and anti-sabotage checking teams in all the districts.

Announcing the move, aimed at further strengthening the state’s law enforcement machinery to address the new challenges of policing and investigation, the CM said his government was now focusing on tackling the new-age crimes, like cyber crimes, and on enhancing the safety and security of women and other vulnerable sections of the society.

Apart from 3100 domain experts to combat specialised crimes, 10000 police officials will be recruited, of which 33 per cent will be women, at the level of sub-inspector and constables, to expand the ground force and ensure more effective policing, said the CM.

With the changing nature of crime necessitating support and interventions by domain experts for the effective prevention and detection of crimes, the Punjab Police would soon recruit around 3100 specialist police officers and domain experts in the fields of law, forensics, digital forensics, information technology, data mining, cyber security, intelligence analysis, human resource management and development and road safety planning & engineering, said Capt Amarinder, who also holds the home portfolio.

Giving details of the initiatives, Director General of Police (DGP), Dinkar Gupta, said domain experts would include around 600 law graduates, 450 crime scene investigators, about 1350 information technology experts with specialist qualifications and experience in law, commerce, forensics, digital forensics, data mining, data analysis etc. for deployment as cyber detectives, financial detectives, homicide detectives, sexual assault and rape detectives etc.

In addition, the Punjab government will also recruit around 460 qualified and trained counsellors, clinical psychologists and community and victim support officers for deployment at the family counselling centres and women help desks in all districts of the state.

The initiatives are aligned to the state’s focus on protecting the safety and dignity of women, for which the Amarinder Singh government has also recently launched the 181 Helpline and the night pick-up and drop-off facility.

In view of the increasing number of fatal accidents as a result of the increase in vehicular traffic, 15 qualified civil engineers and planners will soon be recruited as road safety associates to facilitate safe and smooth flow of transport across the highways and roads of Punjab.