Special Cell for Non-Resident Indians by Punjab Police

Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) cheated back home or involved in a dispute over property or even marriage, are just a phone call or an e-mail away from relief. All they have to do is to contact the NRI cell of the Punjab Police.

Lodging a complaint is a simple process. Recently, the Cell started a NRI Radio helpline to handle grievances of Canada-based NRis.

“We have a live programme with Radio in Canada. Also, we are trying to get in touch with few other radio and TV channels,” Deputy inspector General of Police, NRI cell, Sanjeev Kalra, said.

“i have a feeling that NRIs are not aware that there is such an NRI cell which looks into their problems on a priority basis. So, through all these things, we are trying to project to NRIs all over a feeling that, yes, they have somebody to look to whenever they have a problem here,” Kalra added.

An NRI settled in Toronto, Canada, Palwinder Singh, approached the NRI Cell of the Punjab Police when his family got no help from the local police.

in Palwinder’s absence, his family was attacked several times by miscreants in the village, but the local police didn’t even register their complaint. This left no option for Palwinder, and he returned home.

He then approached the NRI Cell of the Punjab Police and got his case registered. The miscreants were eventually put behind bars.

“i registered my case through the NRI Cell and got the justice which i never thought i would. The miscreants were too powerful that my family had never dreamt of getting justice. it all happened through the NRi Cell that we are now living freely,” Palwinder said.

Located in Chandigarh, the Cell works round the clock to register NRI grievances.

NRis relatives too can approach the Cell. Narvinder’s brother, who is settled in Canada, visited Punjab, and is facing a criminal case. Narvinder approached the NRI Cell to get his brother exonerated.

Since its formation in February 2004, the Cell has handled 932 complaints, out of which 771 have been disposed off satisfactorily, 161 cases are still being looked into.

The nature of complaints reveals that a majority of the NRIs face problems relating to property or money. Marital problems, theft and false allegations follow suit.

NRI victims can send their complaints through an e-mail pbpolicenri@yahoo.co.uk.

Punjabis are ethnically, linguistically and culturally related to the other Indo-Aryan peoples of South Asia.

There are an estimated 120 million Punjabis around the world. The Punjabi people have emigrated in large numbers to many parts of the world.

The United Kingdom has a significant number of Punjabis from both India and Pakistan as does Canada and the United States. The Middle East has a large immigrant community of Punjabis, in places such as the UAE and Kuwait.

Indians in the USA are one of the largest among the groups of Indian diaspora, numbering about 1.7 million, and probably the most well off - their median income is 1.5 times that of the host country. They are well represented in all walks of life, but particularly so in academia, information technology and medicine. There were over 4,000 PIO professors and 33,000 Indian-born students in American universities in 1997-98. The American Association of the Physicians of Indian Origin boasts a membership of 35,000. in 2000, Fortune magazine estimated the wealth generated by Indian Silicon Valley entrepreneurs at around 250 billion dollars.

in the year 2002, of the entire total 1,063,732 immigrants to USA from all the countries, as many as 66,864 were from India. According to the US census, the overall growth rate for Indians from 1990 to 2000 was 105.87 per cent. The average growth rate for the whole of USA was only 7.6 per cent.

Source-http://punjabnewz.com/1230/punjab-police-has-special-cell-for-non-resident-indians.html