Deccan Chronicle Newspaper

6th, Jan, 2009

By Asit Jolly

Chandigarh

Recently “handicapped” by a High Court order significantly scaling down the number of security men and vehicles deployed to protect top politicians and bureaucrats, the Punjab police is now seeking to better its anti-terrorist skills by re-training its commandos in advanced martial arts and equipping them with state of-the-art Swiss weaponry.

Police commandos on Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s elaborate, 1,000-man security detail in Chandigarh as well as others at the Punjab Armed Police Academy at Jalandhar were recently shown live demonstrations of Krav Maga — a Czechoslovakian-Israeli unarmed combat technique currently employed by special forces across the world.

Staged over 10 days by experts from the Israeli Krav Maga Federation (India), the demonstrations were a precursor exercise to identify physically and emotionally suited personnel to undertake advanced courses in the technique supervised by Israeli instructors.

“The idea is to arm our men with specialised skills that could prove far more efficient than pistols and AK-47s in the protection of VIPs,” said a senior police officer. He admitted that with their present level of training and fitness, many of Punjab police commandos constituted more of a threat than any security to the people they are supposed to protect.

“There is always the possibility that motivated intruders could snatch a PSO’s weapon and use it on the protectee in a crowd or other close protection situations,” the officer said. Vicky Kapoor, the man who runs IKMF-India, insists “unarmed combat skills are the only solution on the street.” According to him, state police forces and other security agencies in India have been “overly focused” on procuring weapons. “Yes, a good weapon is important but even more critical is the man behind that weapon,” he said, adding, “As soon as we have a formal request, IKMF will commence an advanced Krav Maga course for a hand-picked group of Punjab police commandos.”

Source: Deccan Chronicles