Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh today said a few people from the opposition "unnecessarily" flare up law and order issues for "political benefits", referring to the Kotkhai schoolgirl rape and murder case.
He said the police had put their "best efforts" to crack the case and nab the culprits in the case but "a lot of hullabaloo was created by the few in opposition", and maintained the state has a "very low" crime rate.
"I personally wrote to the Prime Minister to hand over the case to the CBI not because our police was inefficient, but taking into consideration the voice of the people," said Singh, speaking at the passing out parade of the 16th batch of police recruits at police training Daroh in Kangra.
The chief minister said the CBI recently urged for three months extra time to submit the status report in the case, but the High Court has given the agency two weeks time.
"The CBI should not delay the matter ... It should go ahead to nab culprits at the earliest," he added.
In his address to the fresh recruits, Singh said the main motive of the 'Khaki' was to eradicate evil from the society and deal with criminals strictly.
"The responsibility of protecting the property and people of the state rests on your shoulders and you should make certain that anti-social elements do not creep in to disturb law and order and create fear in the society," he said.
He said the image of Himachal Pradesh as well as of the police department depends on them and hoped the new batch would augment the trained manpower of state police.
As many as 785 police personnel were given training at Police Training College (PTC), Daroh. Also 269 women police personnel were trainedat the 2nd India Reserve Battalion (IRB), Sakoh while 184 got trained at 1st Himachal Pradesh Armed Police at Junga in the 16th batch.
The parade was also attended by Director General of Police (DGP) Somesh Goyal, DIG, Northern Range J P Singh, among other senior officers of the state police.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)