Beed Police Remove Surnames From Name Plates To Curb Caste-Based Discrimination

Police personnel in Maharashtra's Beed district will now put up their name plates without surnames, in an attempt to eliminate caste-based discrimination, an official said on Thursday.

Nearly 100 such name plates have been distributed across police stations and other offices of the department in the central Maharashtra district, the official said.

Earlier, Beed Superintendent of Police (SP) Navneet Kanwat in January directed the officials to address each other by their first name, and not surname, with an aim to curb the caste bias.

Now, the SP's office has distributed name plates, for display on tables in the offices of the security personnel, which do not have a mention of their surname, the official said.

Also, the small name plates put up by police personnel on their uniforms will have to be made individually without them displaying their surnames, the official added.

Kanwat was posted as the SP of Beed in December last year after the murder of Massajog village sarpanch Santosh Deshmukh, who was abducted, tortured and killed for trying to stop an extortion attempt against an energy firm operating a windmill project there.

Deshmukh's murder on December 9, 2024, had acquired a caste angle as the victim was a Maratha, while most of the accused in the killing are Vanjari, a dominant community in the Beed region.