State police officers hone skills in war zone

KOLKATA: It’s not often that young police officers from the state get an assignment abroad. It’s even more rare to get the opportunity to police a war zone.
Ten Kolkata and West Bengal Police personnel were accorded this rare honour when they were chosen to represent India at the United Nations’ peacekeeping forces rebuilding war-ravaged Kosovo.
Back in the city after spending a year in Kosovo, the officers have come back with loads of experience as well as stories. The team left Kolkata on May 20, 2002. After an initial training of five days at a police training school in Pristina they were posted to different places.
The training mainly focused on initiating the security forces from different countries about the dos and don’ts of working in a country still nursing the wounds of ethnic cleansing.
“Kosovo is like a mine zone as the Serbs had placed mines all over the country. We were taught how to locate them,� said Soumen Basu, a subinspector with the intelligence branch.
“It was a mind-blowing experience. Working in a totally computerised atmosphere was educational. Everything from the First Information Report to the follow-up investigation is done on computers,� he said.
Basu, who was placed with the border police, said human trafficking was a major problem in Kosovo. “There are a few pockets where Serbs still live. But they constitute only around 2-3 per cent of the population. However, the situation in these pockets are very tense. Police forces man these areas for 24 hours,� he said.
Basu’s roommate Sujit Chakraborty, a sub-inspector with Kolkata Police, was placed along with him at the border. “There were personnel from 55 countries in the peacekeeping force. It was a great learning experience. For instance, whenever we go through a search procedure, we always think of the search procedures followed by our German or American counterparts who were on the mission and shared with us their work techniques,� he said.
The police officers discovered that people of Kosovo love watching Hindi films. During their interactions with the officers, several locals confessed that they were Hindi movie freaks.