BENGALURU: Around midnight, Ravi Raju, a resident of 8th Main Road, Basaveshwaranagar, saw two men standing suspiciously near his house. Sensing something was amiss, he clicked the picture of the men and sent to ‘Basaveshwaranagar-Beat 3 group’ on
WhatsApp.
In no time, a
head constable from Basaveshwaranagar
called Raju and informed him that a
Hoysala patrol vehicle
was on its way to his house. However, the matter was solved after police found the youths to be house occupants of 10th Main Road, and had come out of the house following a tiff with roommates.
Ravi Raju is among 5,000 men and women, including professionals and students, who are part of 100 WhatsApp groups created by Vijayanagara sub-division police from the west part of the city.
Residents and other locals are slowly making better use of these groups, cops say. “They send pictures of parking violations, illegal shops, crowds gathering outside liquor shops and so on,” a cop said.
Deputy commissioner of police (west) Ravi D Channananavar told TOI that they are getting positive response from group members.
“This is a huge step in making police-public relationship better. Our aim is that locals should be able to contact cops without going to stations,” he said.
Successful endeavourWhatsApp groups are in sync with the beats in Vijayanagar subdivision. For better administration purpose, areas falling under the jurisdiction of a police station are divided into different beats and assigned to head constables or constables.
Each of the 500 beats in the five police stations of Vijayanagar subdivision have a WhatsApp group, with the respective head constables and constables as administrators.
The beat heads take care of issuing warrants, identifying repeat offenders, verification for passport or job applications, checking arms licences and most importantly, regularly interacting with residents and locals.
Channananavar said the working of beats in Vijayanagar police subdivision is worthy of emulation.
“ACP HN Dharmendra is successfully handling these beats. Last week, we checked out the antecedents of residents in Basaveshwaranagar, Kamakshipalya, KP Agrahara and Magadi Road police station limits. There around 100 beats in each police stations with at least 50 members in each group,” he said.