Rashmi Nandedkar, Nagpur ACB’s first woman chief, promises a turnaround

Nagpur: Rashmi Nandedkar, the first woman superintendent of the state anti-corruption bureau’s (ACB) Nagpur range, is raring to lift the sagging image and morale of the unit. Her predecessor had to leave with a molestation charge on his head. The ‘MeToo’ episode seems to have triggered the government decision to put a woman at the department’s helm, and Nandedkar wants to bury the episode with an emphatic tenure.
A teacher-turned-police officer, Nandedkar is a state cadre officer of 2009-10 batch. She now has six districts under her, including Nagpur city, and has prioritized her goal of creating a new benchmark in anti-corruption cases. She plans to pay special attention to ‘traps’, where government employees are caught red-handed taking bribes. This former Additional SP of Bhandara wants to take justice to the grass-root level.
Admitting that trap cases are on the decline, Nandedkar is keen to restore the trend to create an impact and discourage such activities at government offices and its agencies covered under the definition of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
Nandedkar, daughter of a retired teacher, said service delivery, and excellence and efficiency would be the two work ethics she would ensure in her new unit. “Exploitation should stop at every level. We need to send a strong message across the system that there can be a bad day when law would catch up with them,” said Nandedkar, whose first posting was as Sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) Akot division in Akola between 2011 and 2014.
Nandedkar was instrumental in ensuring two kidnappers and murderers of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl were sentenced to life imprisonment while she was SDPO Akot. “I may not have been able to save the life of the girl, who was murdered within two hours of her abduction, but conviction had alleviated some pain,” she said, highlighting the incident as the most crucial so far in her career.
“In ACB cases too, I would like to increase the rate of conviction by plugging loopholes in past matters. There is an existing system of reviewing decisions of the court, which would be diligently followed by us to improve the quality of cases to get convictions,” she said. “If I start now, the cases under me would get convictions when they come up for trial in the coming years,” she said.
Nandedkar also said the blacklist of corrupt personnel in different departments would be analysed by her in the coming days, and also the issue of getting sanctions for charge sheets. “I do not believe there is any reason to buckle under political pressure. We have to follow the course of the law,” said Nandedkar in response of a TOI query about handling highly sensitive cases like irrigation scams.