Mumbai: The State police forces and Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) testing positive for the novel coronavirus are constituting around 2 per cent of the total caseload of India. Currently, 664 deaths and over 1.21 lakh personnel from CAPF and State police force.
Indian Police Foundation (IPF) has written to the state police authorities across India pressing for an annual health check-up of the entire forces.
According to data collected by IPF, 1,21,903 cases have been reported among personnel in state police forces and CAPF to date.
The Maharashtra police has 21,988 total number of positive cases, Central Reserve Police Force has 10,267 cases, Border Security Force has 8,934 cases, West Bengal police has 7,963 cases, and Central Industrial Security Force has 7,612 cases which makes the highest number of cases in the country.
The data shows that case occurrence in state police forces is higher than that of CAPF, as calculated by total cases as a percentage of total force strength.
Former IPS officer N Ramachandran, president and founder of IPF, said, ‘We have been observing the growth of Coronavirus cases in the state police and CAPF in the last three months. Over a period now, the number has remained around 2% of the total number of cases in India. While this number is now steady, it is a high number for a group of specific professions among a country’s population. In other words, 1 in every 50 people affected by COVID-19 is a cop’.
Ramachandran said, ‘we have been discussing how we can tackle the over all health issue of police including nature of duty and odd working hours which result in lifestyle ailments, especially after 10 to 15 years of service’. ‘We have noticed, CAPF does have a system of annual health check-up, many state police forces still do not have that. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and deaths due to comorbidities, we have recently written to individual state police forces to conduct regular annual health check-ups,’added Ramachandran.
To date, 664 personnel have died of Covid-19 across the country. Maharashtra (239), CRPF (46), Telangana (44), Karnataka (44), and CISF (29) have reported the highest number of deaths.