PATNA: In a first of its kind initiative in the country, Bihar's Home Guard wing of armed police force, in association with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), jointly constituted a Special Security Team (SST) with 440 specially trained Home Guard jawans in Bihar on Saturday.

The trained cops of this Special Security Team would be deputed for the safety of RBI's currency chests within Bihar's 16 more or less extremist activity-affected districts.

Director General (DG) of Bihar's Home Guard Rakesh Kumar Mishra accompanied by deputy general manager (security) of RBI Prashant Kumar Dayal, flagged off the first batch of 440 specially trained HG jawans in different districts.

Speaking to The New Indian Express over phone, Umesh N Mishra, spokesperson of HG, said, 'An integrated security duty is being developed with RBI for the currency chest security by trained jawans of HM. The training of the second batch of selected HG jawans is going at Bihta based training institute in weaponry handling as well various modern ways of currency chests security, who will be inducted in this kind of duty soon'.

In Bihar, there are 62 RBI currency chests which would all be manned by the trained jawans of this SST gradually.

'A total 1000 home guards cops would get roped in this specialised duty and put on deputation with the RBI. The RBI will meet all expenses including their wages besides other entitlements as per the rule of RBI', he said.

Quoting the assurance of RBI's deputy GM (security), Mishra said that 'Dayal has assured to provide security allowance and if the services of SST cops are found satisfactory ahead.'

He said that Home Guard is the single special trained HG police force in the entire country on whose caps 'niskam seva' (selfless service) used to be inscribed.

Other prominent leaders who graced the flagging off the event, were deputy DG HG Pankaj Sinha, commandments Chandan Kushwaha, Rashid Jama, Vimal Kumar, Jayant Kumar, Anirudh Prasad and Avinash Kumar.