Jammu, Feb 26: The Jammu and Kashmir Police has trained about 400 personnel, including women cops in ‘riot control’   skills, as a pre-emptive measure to tackle any unrest in the valley. 
 Against the set target of training about 5000 personnel in ‘latest techniques’ of riot controlling, the first batch of  429, including 60 women personnel which completed one month refresher course  presented demonstrated their skills at a function held here today in presence of state police chief, Kuldeep Khuda at Armed Police Training School Sunjwan
  “For not being well prepared to deal with such situations, 100 people were killed and 3,000 cops were wounded during the riots last year” Khoda told reporters on the side line of the function.
 Admitting that the civilian loss was because of lack of skill among the police personnel, he said that time it was not well equipped to deal with the street protests, especially with the stones which led to colossal loss of life. 
 He claimed that the department has procured latest non-lethal weapons which would be used in crowed controlling. Besides this body protection equipments would be provided to the personnel, while controlling the violent mobs to avoid any injury to them.
 He said the department was looking forward to train 5,000 policemen in the use of less or non-lethal weapons with the objective of minimising the injuries and killings while dealing with the mobs.
 Khoda   said that after combating militancy in the State JKP is also focusing on ensuring peace and normalcy in the entire State. “To achieve better results, the Organization is imparting crowd control training in various police training institutions and by end of March this year, five battalions of IRP would be ready for this purpose”, he added.
 He said that our priority would be to ensure least damage to the civilians as well as men of the force while dealing with law and order situations.
 Earlier,   the trained personnel, during a  mock drill, demonstrated their skills when a  scene of  last year’s valley summer unrest was recreated in an open area, with protesters, both men and women, shouting slogans   threw stones towards the anti- riot contingent   which  successfully overpowered all the ‘rioters’ without causing any injure to any one.

Lastupdate on : Sat, 26 Feb 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 26 Feb 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 27 Feb 2011 00:00:00 IST