The State Home Department in Maharashtra is gearing up for a significant overhaul of its top police leadership, including the position of Director General of Police (DGP) and Police Commissioners of Nagpur and Thane. The impending retirement of the current DGP, Rajnish Seth, on December 31 has prompted the department to commence the process of selecting his successor.A top rank official said that several prominent names have emerged as contenders for the esteemed position of State DGP. The frontrunner is Senior IPS Officer Rashmi Shukla, who currently serves as the Director General (DG) of Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB). Mumbai Police Commissioner Vivek Phansalkar is also a strong candidate for the role. Other notable contenders include Thane CP Jaijeet Singh, DG ATS Sadanand Date, DG Police Housing Sandeep Bishnoi, DG Railway Pradnya Sarvade, Additional Director of NIA Atulchandra Kulkarni, and DG State Security Corporation Bipin Kumar Singh, he said. He further stated that the State Home
Publsihed on July 5, 2017
With an aim to reclaim the lost glory of detection’, Commissioner of Police (CP) Dr. K Venkatesham has decided to scrap all zonal units of City Crime Branch and revert back to centralised system. The Zonal units were launched last year to create deterrence in the crime world and aim was that it would provide operational flexibility. But the idea did not bear fruits and result were not up to the mark, revealed the assessment done by top bosses.
When asked, CP Dr. Venkatesham told The Hitavada that all territorial units would be scrapped and new ‘functional units’ would be formed to improve detection rate. The zone-wise Units were launched by the then City Police Chief Sharda Prasad Yadav on the lines of Mumbai and Thane Police. Prompt reaction and penetration of deep roots of informers in crime world was the idea behind the zonal units. Another exception was that the unit offices would also help the informers and complainants to have better and easier access to the Crime Branch officers. But when the idea was implemented on ground, the results could not meet the expectations.
Daily functioning of the units was -- staff came to Crime Branch office in Gittikhadan for a meeting in morning hours and then moved to their respective zones. But what the units were doing in field thereafter was a mystery.
It may be mentioned that before formation of Zonal units, the Crime Branch had centralised ‘functional’ squads in which Zone-wise squads followed body offences and there were separate squads for robberies, chain snatchings and vehicle thefts. Presence of the Crime Branch was visible in the crime world during the ‘functional units’ as the squads achieved mastery in their respective crime-heads and doing fast detection of crime.
A senior police officer who was heading one such squad in the Crime Branch said that the Zonal squads were working like police stations. They ended-up following every crime and property offences but with limited man-power the objective could not achieved. We were repeating work of police stations at these Units where Crime Branch is meant to act as specialised agency. “Detection is the main area of Crime Branch but we were asked to concentrate on preventive action thereby distracting us from detection. As there was no direct supervision, the Units less bothered about results of daily work. This working style deteriorated the functioning of Crime Branch,” he claimed.
Another reason for failure of Zonal system could be lack of resources for the teams in city unlike deep pockets available to their counterparts in Mumbai City and Thane City. Even Chowki system is functioning very well in Pune city. For Nagpur city the geographical area is not that big and besides vacancies at every level, mostly at Sub-Inspector and Inspector level, means decentralisation is always to ensure limited results.
Comments
Post a Comment