Pune police commissioner Retesh Kumarr vows to take tough action against vandals and street crimes

PUNE: City police commissioner Retesh Kumarr on Friday said the force was chalking out a strategy to check the spurt in vandalism and street crimes, including those involving minors, by invoking provisions under special enactments like MCOCA, MPDA and the Juvenile Justice Acts.“You will see the difference in two months,” Kumarr told reporters on Friday on being questioned about the recent incidents of youths brazenly brandishing weapons on streets, ransacking roadside establishments and creating terror in different areas.“We have instructed our police stations to focus on criminals and criminal groups active for the past five to seven years and devise a strategy to act against them,” Kumarr, the commissioner of police (CP), Pune, said.“A special focus is being put on the recent firing incidents to find the source of illegal firearms and establish who is involved,” he said.Kumarr, who took charge on December 16, told TOI, “A review of criminal cases has revealed that most criminals are operating in parts of the city and the recently merged areas, earlier part of rural Pune. We had a meeting of senior officers on Thursday and told them to strengthen the criminal intelligence information system, identify miscreants, anti-social elements and troublemakers, and take action against them with a plan.”He said, “Six firing instances were reported in Pune since December 16. We have detected them and recovered four firearms. The investigating officers are trying to trace the source of firearms. We have launched a special drive to check the sale and procurement of illegal firearms since December 28 last year.”Additional commissioner of police (crime) Ramnath Pokale said, “We recovered 40 sickles and four firearms in the special drive on December 28 and 29. The source of firearms used in the six firing incidents could not be established immediately because they might have been procured through different sources. In one of the firing cases, we have invoked the MCOCA. In other cases, action has been taken under provisions of the IPC and other laws.”Pokale said, “We have prepared a list of buyers, sellers and criminals arrested under the Arms Act in the past five years and circulated the list to all crime branch officers and zonal deputy commissioners of police to monitor their current activities.”