Horses cow down Ahmedabad city cops

Having failed to get an enthusiastic response from different departments of the local police at the city and district level of the police headquarters of the state, the mounted police wing of the state police was forced to recruit personnel from the State Reserved Police (SRP).

Not even a single person from the local police opted for the challenging job of a mounted cop.

"We did not receive even a single application from the local police of the entire state who was interested in a mounted police post," police inspector, mounted police, Police Horse Training Centre, Gujarat state, JB Gohil told DNA. Gohil further said that the department then, perforce, passed on the application for the vacancy of 253 mounted police to the State Reserve Police (SRP) and for that it received over 2000 applications.

The department short listed the candidates to 872. "Based on merit, the candidates were later finalised to 253, out of which 96 had already been recruited in the mounted police, while others will be joining next week," Gohil said.

The state police purchased 196 horses against a vacancy of 223 horses. The department spent as much as Rs1.71 crore to purchase these horses in a period of two months.

Horses from classy breeds like Kathiawadi, Marwadi, Sindhi, Thoroughbred, Half Thoroughbred and horses from North India, were purchased.
"Horses in the price range of Rs70,000 to Rs1 lakhs were purchased and a training of 41 weeks will now be provided to these horses," Gohil said.