Bhatkal, June 20: Confusion prevailed among the residents of Bhatkal town after the police launched door to door survey seeking details of the people and their credentials for the last one week.
While the senior police officials referring this as a routine exercise towards crime prevention, the locals suspect something amiss as such exercise has been exclusively kept in the Muslim dominated areas.
The town which is in the news for wrong reasons in the past was shocked when people suddenly saw policemen on every door step seeking details of the family members. “ They started saying that they are collecting data as part of crime prevention, but seek details of the family members including the number of family members, there age, their passport number, their profession and property details.
When asked about the notice or any intimation letter, they refused bluntly forcing us to part with the information, said a resident.
The matter was brought to the notice of the association who met DY Superintendent of Police M Narayana. HE assured that the exercise is part of crime prevention and asked us to co-operate. He also gave us the reason that police beat system in the town would be revamped and they need such data for preventive measures .
Narayana told us that this is a district wise exercise, but when we checked with other towns, there is no such exercise is being carried out, Resident Association General Secretary SM Parvez told MiD-DAY.
Moreover if they needed the data they could access from the census reports which has recently been covered. Moreover seeking completely details leading us to suspect something is cooking, he said.
Meanwhile senior officials of the investigating agency, said that the police are trying ot gather information on particular persons and since they can not do it specifically, they might be expanding it to other people living in the surrounding areas.
Karwar SP, R Ramesh reiterated that this is a routine exercise to revamp the beat system. It's apart of crime prevention and such data required and helps us in the investigations, he said.
It may be recalled that after reports about Indian Mujahideen terror suspect , Riyaz Bhatkal and his brother were making rounds, another youth Samad Bhatkal was wrongly detained by Mumbai ATS on charges of terrorism in June last year and later released citing it as mistaken identity.
We are going to submit a detailed memorandum to the senior police officers questioning this, he said that this police action has scared the residents anticipating trouble in future.
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