Rajnath asks police to be sensitive towards 'pain' of people

Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday asked police to be sensitive towards the "pain" of people, noting that being tough and forceful could sometime become "counter-productive".

Addressing the annual 'Endowment Lecture', organised by the Intelligence Bureau, the home minister said police must be sensitive towards the problems of common people and develop the capacity to realise their "pain".

"Police must play a role to reduce people's pain. Even though police sometime have to be forceful but being tough or too much forceful sometime could be counter-productive," he said at the event attended by senior police and intelligence officers.

Advocating strongly for introduction of technology in policing, Singh said there was no alternative to adopting technology to deal with criminals, who too have been using modern devices to carry out crime.

"We want police to be technologically modern with the capacity to get real time information," he said.

The home minister expressed concern over scarce presence of police in many rural areas of the country, saying such a situation has to be improved as the country's 70 per cent population live in villages.

He said police should not be bothered by jurisdictional issues and must go ahead with their job and share information with their counterparts of the neighbouring areas whenever there is a need.

"We must remember that police cannot work in isolation," he said.

Referring to the problem of radicalisation of youths, Singh said the menace was a "global challenge" and sought joint action to deal with it.

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He also favoured time-bound action to deal with cybercrime in the country as the menace was growing.

The home minister also stressed the need for welfare of the country's constabulary, saying constables must have enough promotion avenues in their career.

Later, replying to a question from a former Intelligence Bureau officer, Rajinder Kumar, regarding legal protection to intelligence officers for their professional duties, Singh said the government would look into the issue in future.