Will ensure every woman moves safely in city: New CP

Nagpur: The city’s new police commissioner (CP) Amitesh Kumar, who took over the baton from BK Upadhyay, said on Saturday he would ensure every woman and senior citizen in the city feels at ease to move around safely, at any point of time. The new CP also stated he would invoke stringent provisions of law if the weaker sections of society were targeted, during his first formal press conference held at Police Gymkhana.
Vowing to clamp down on corruption, Kumar said he would not let a situation arise where a cop is caught taking a bribe. “We will stop corruption and stress on transparency and fairness,” he added.
Prior to the press conference, state home minister Anil Deshmukh set the agenda for city police before Kumar, during the farewell programme of former CP Upadhyay. Deshmukh told Kumar that every citizen must have trust and faith on the cops, and women must be safe in the city. He also said Upadhyay and his team had almost cleansed the city of goons, and henceforth no new ones should crop up.
Reflecting the priorities of the home minister, Kumar said he would stress on basic and effective policing. “Murder rate has already come down in the city, and I will try to ensure it becomes even lesser. I would review the state of street crimes, detection, economic offences, cyber crimes and formulate the course of action,” said Kumar, a 1995 batch IPS with his second stint in the city after 13 years.
Post the press conference, Kumar, in his maiden address to city police officers, presented a no-nonsense stance. Speaking mostly in Marathi, Kumar, who was seated alongside the Covid-recovered joint CP Nilesh Bharne, ensured he repeated certain points in the Queen’s language to stress on them. Amid the recurrent “he chalnar nahi” (this will not be tolerated), Kumar’s ‘I will not hear this’ could be frequently heard.
Kumar sought rotation of staffers’ duties, particularly mentioning the writers of inspectors. “If you feel it is not possible to function without your writers then surrender your chair to them,” said Kumar. There was pin-drop silence among cops as Kumar sounded the warning.