Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): As many as 48 police outposts were set up across the state highways in 2015 with the objective to curb road accidents and prevent fatalities. However, the absence of police personnel at the outposts have resulted in accidents going unrestrained.
The data provided by the Police headquarters (PHQ) revealed that a total of 5,123 people have lost their lives in road accidents on the highways of the state in the past year, which is around 1,500 more than the tally of 2022. Apart from curbing road accidents and preventing fatalities, the outposts were set up to penalise traffic norm violations and reckless drivers.
According to the sources as the PHQ, since the state is low on the number of police personnel in the force, the outposts have gone empty and the accidents have gone rampant, in which, a huge number of people end up losing their lives. The data further mentioned that in terms of road accident fatalities, the state is on the fourth spot and as many as 160 black spots are present on the state highways.
Apart from deploying the police personnel at all the 48 outposts on the highways, there has been no update on the measures being taken to control accidents at all the black spots. Notably, the project to lay the outposts had cost a whopping Rs 250 crore, which has been unable to cater to its objective. When Free Press tried to contact, the ADG of Police training and research institute (PTRI) was neither found at the office, nor responded to the phone call.
