BOMBAY, 26 October 2005 — Aimed at giving a more secular touch to the city police force and an attempt to attune to the changing priorities of policing with greater attention on international terrorism, the Bombay police is launching a drive to recruit more Muslims in its force.

The scheme to enroll Muslims into the city police force is the brainchild of Bombay Police Commissioner Anami Narayan Roy, who said that the Bombay police were keen to increase the representation and percentage of Muslims in the force in order to have the same kind of homogeneity in the force as that in the society.

Roy was very keen to add more Muslims to the 42,000-plus strong police force of Bombay. He said that at present there were only two percent Muslims in the city police and he wanted to increase the percentage to at least 15 percent

Roy become the first city police commissioner to take the initiative of interacting with Muslims and during his speeches in Muslim institutions he had appealed to Muslim leaders to exhort the youths to join the city police force with a promise that his department would extend all cooperation and assistance to Muslim candidates.

Keeping no secrets of the facts that the growing meance of terorism and organized crime has compelled the city police to strengthen its intelligence network and with wider reprsentation of Muslims in the force, the task of the police would become easier to penetrate into terrorist groups.

Stating that in the past Muslim police offficers and their espionage channels in the Muslim community wre helpful, Roy said that the police would deinitely use the resources of the Muslim police officers in collecting information about Ijtemaa and other Muslim gatherings.Explaining the logic that a Muslim would know more Muslims, which he said can be used in gaining and collating intelligence.

Some years ago the Bombay police had embarked on such a program to attract Musl9ims youths to its fold with a former chairman of the Minority Commission Naeem Siddiqui also roped in to advise Muslims to join force. But midway the recruitment drive fizzled out as the Minority Commission was disbanded.

Initially Muslims youths were reluctant to joint he Bombay police force due to their lack of command over Marathi, the Bombay police’s operational language, but now with the support of Roya and others, who the Muslims describe as sympathic to them, Muslm youths are now willing to join the polcie force. Surprisngly, the percentage of Muslim offciers and men in otherdistricts of Maharashtra is not as low as that of Bombay.

Tongue in cheek police officers say that the bold move by Roy to recruit Muslim will hurt the Sena tiger Bal Thackeray more than anyone else.