Police unaware of deadline, yet to file report on senior citizens

By Pradeep Gupta (Exclusive)

The Maharashtra government is spending crores of rupees on modernization of the police department in order that they can accomplish their tasks smoothly. But the police work itself is slow and shoddy. After a spurt in cases of murder of senior citizens, Commissioner of Police D. Sivanandhan had issued instructions to all police stations to make a report of the number of senior citizen living in their jurisdiction. The report was to be submitted to the DCP Operation at the CP’s office by July 6.

In the last six months, nine senior citizens were murdered. The CP had asked local police stations officials to personally visit the homes of the senior citizens, meet them and record all their details. The shocking fact is that still none of the local DCPs has submitted this report to the police headquarters as yet.

The circular has also asked the local police to verify the characters of the vendors like milkmen, newspaper vendors, drivers, domestic helps, etc of the senior citizens and if possible, with photographs and submit the same to the police headquarters. The circular issued to all the police stations has asked the police stations to record the contact numbers of the neighbours of the senior citizens to help them in times of emergency.

The police chief has asked the police stations to provide all the details handy with the Beat Marshals and order them to visit the senior citizens at least once in a week. The senior citizens have also to be informed about the helpline numbers 103 and 1090.

The local police stations have been ordered to arrange a meeting with all the housing society officials and if possible to convince them to install CCTVs for surveillance and to also keep a record of all the visitors to their societies, with the vehicles numbers of the visitors. The societies have been advised to install bio-metric system too.

The senior police inspectors has been asked to keep a vigil against dacoits, thieves, gangsters in their areas who have previous records of crimes in the last five years, through their detection staff. In addition to this, they have been asked to act against those found roaming suspiciously in the localities where senior citizens live.

Meanwhile Sivanandhan told reporters, "It is our main priority to provide security to senior citizens with a fearless atmosphere and we are doing all our best to minimize crime in the city."

More than 14 days after the deadline, DCP officials have failed to submit the report to the DCP operation in police headquarters. Shockingly, when contacted, Amar Jadhav, DCP Operation, was surprised and said, “I have to check about such a circular.”