Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
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.
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