An Officer’s 25 Years of Transformative Policing
- Bhakti Kothari
- Published on 8 Oct 2023, 9:05 am IST
- 4 minutes read
Highlights
- Alok Kumar Vashishtha, a senior IPS officer with 25 years of service, successfully cracked a blind case involving the kidnapping and murder of a 7-year-old girl in Sikar district
- During his tenure as Additional Commissioner of Police, Jaipur, and Commissioner of Police, Jodhpur, he introduced many innovative measures
- His commitment to combating corruption extended to digitizing the tedious process of police verification for passports
Currently posted as the Additional Director General of Police, State Disaster Relief Force in Jaipur, Rajasthan, IPS officer of 1998 batch, Mr. Alok Kumar Vashishtha, has done commendable work in the field during the last 25 years of his service. He has served in almost all parts of the state and has worked in numerous wings of the Rajasthan Police. With an extensive experience in field policing, anti-corruption work and intelligence and security organizations, the officer’s journey has been a roller-coaster ride.
Indian Masterminds exclusively spoke with the officer to know more about his 25 years long journey in the service.
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According to the officer, his most memorable moments in the service were when he found himself helping the voiceless, in any way possible. However, there were also cases which were hard nuts to crack and he had to face extreme challenges and difficulties while cracking them.
One particular case that he distinctly remembers is when he was involved in successfully cracking the kidnapping and murder case of a minor girl child about seven years of age, whose dead body was found floating in a well, in the Sikar district of Rajasthan. The officer was posted as the SP of the place during the time.
“It was a blind case and we had absolutely no leads to investigate. During the time that the case took place, around 20 years ago, DNA profiling was not a common method of practice to solve cases. The only center existed in Hyderabad. My team and I travelled to the place and got the DNA profiling of the suspect done with the body, which helped us in getting the accurate result,” shared the officer.
With the combined efforts of his team, Mr. Vashishtha was able to solve the case and ultimately nab the culprit in a few days’ time. The accused was awarded the capital punishment by the court and justice was served to the little girl and her family.
A SPECIAL INITIATIVE
During his tenure as the Additional Commissioner of Police, Jaipur, around 2015-16, followed by his tenure as Commissioner of Police, Jodhpur, Mr. Vashishtha came up with several new ideas that would benefit not only the policing community but also the common people of the cities.
As ADC Jaipur, he came up with close circuit TV cameras integrated with the help of computer server, something which was done for the first time in the state. Later on, the entire system, based on his idea, was expanded on a large scale along with the development of command and control centers in all the divisional headquarters by the state government.
Mr. Vashishtha was also involved in the deployment of motorbike riders, especially in densely populated areas. The bikers were deployed regularly which increased the police’s mobility.
“It was extremely beneficial, specifically in those areas where larger vehicles were difficult to maneuver,” he told Indian Masterminds.
In Jodhpur, the senior IPS officer implemented ‘Shakti mobile vehicles’, which were women patrolling vehicles, that turned out to be a huge success.
ANTI CORRUPTION
He had the opportunity to work in the Anti-Corruption bureau as well and he feels obliged for the opportunity as he learned a lot during that time, especially when it came to complicated investigations and difficult cases where evidence is extremely difficult to collect.
During his tenure as the IG, Security in 2019-2020, while he was assigned the responsibility of looking after the Internal Security of the state, which also included police verification, Mr. Vashishtha implemented a project to help his team with the cumbersome and tiring process of police verification of passports, something which can be very tedious as it is entirely done on an offline basis.
“We completely revolutionized and changed the process of police verification being offline and switched it to the online mode. Therefore, all the process at the police level from thana, to DCP/SP, and Intelligence branch, became seamlessly integrated with the online process already in place with the passport authority. This saved us a lot of time and effort,” shared the officer.
His effort has also induced transparency between authorities and public as it helps them to keep a check on the process and see where the matter is pending. Thus, the digitization of police verification for passports has proved to be an important intervention, one that both the police and the public still thank the officer for.
END OF THE ARTICLE
