Noida police can now chase down criminals in style. The Noida authority has provided them 20 Bolero cars to be operated as PCR vehicles, delivering on a promise made last year. However, the keepers of the law have been forced to appoint private drivers, because of a manpower crunch. And this has raised apprehensions of intelligence leakage.

"We always had police officers who would drive the cars as we are given special training for that. But Noida police is running so short of staff that they have to hire private drivers for these Bolero cars," a police official said, on condition of anonymity.u00a0

"There are chances that the driver may leak some crucial information or inform the criminals. Vans also have wireless set through which we communicate our position and share information of any case so there are chances that this information can be misused,"u00a0 he added.

Senior police officers are now planning to conduct verifications as they have no record of these drivers who have been hired by Noida Authority. Moreover, if a police officer, who is in charge or is the driver of the car and is found guilty of misconduct, he is prosecuted according to police rules and regulations but these drivers do not comes under such rules.

Deepak Agarwal District Magistrate Gautam Budh Nagar said: "We have no choice but to hire private drivers. To recruit so many police officers immediately is not possible so we have to manage somehow.u00a0 We will give directions to the SSP to conduct verification of drivers so that they have proper records of them."

Noida authority is taking care of all the expenses of these cars which will function as PCR vans. A sub inspector and constable are deployed with each vehicle.