‘Doing our best to maintain law & order, request citizens to comply with rules’

During Diwali, the Bombay High Court had set a deadline for bursting crackers from 8pm to 10pm. How does the Mumbai police plan to play a part in curbing air and noise pollution on New Year’s eve?
Although police will patrol roads to ensure compliance with rules and guidelines, my humble request to citizens is that they follow the decibel and timing guidelines issued by the high court.

Police often ask citizens in areas facing the sea, like Worli, Bandra Bandstand and other public places to leave at night. Any special directions given to the constabulary rank by seniors?
We do not ask anyone to leave but under the safety and security criteria, we generally follow certain regulations, and ensure proper measures are taken and police presence is constant especially during the dark hours.

What are your plans for the safety of women, children and senior citizens?
For this, we have a special Nirbhaya squad and dedicated patrolling personnel at all 93 police stations. The safety of women is Mumbai police’s top priority and all policemen have been directed to register citizen’s complaints and deal with them at the earliest. Because of such extra effort, we have managed to arrest the miscreants in 98 per cent complaints lodged by women under Protection of Children under Sexual Offences Act. We have also detected 96 per cent cases of rape and 93 per cent molestation cases registered through the year till December 10.

Also, in the last five years, we have traced missing women in 99 per cent instances. And for the well being of senior citizens, we are maintaining a record and mapping all senior citizens living alone in the city. We have assigned policemen to regularly check on the nearly 4,000 senior citizens at their homes. For children, our Nirbhaya teams and beat officers are conducting seminars in schools and colleges to sensitise them and bring awareness about good and bad touch.

We also organise grievance redressal every Saturday for senior citizens and women at all police stations to address their problems. So far, we have got 19,870 applications from citizens and have resolved every issue.

How do you plan to curb the menace of cybercrime? Burking of complaints, poor detection and recovery rate in cyber crime cases are serious issues, how do you plan to tackle this?
Recently we started 13 cyber labs, each of them dedicated to people of that zone. The labs are very well equipped and we believe it will help improve detection rate. However, as compared with last year’s 10 per cent, we have managed to crack 26 per cent of cases registered this year till December 10. While we have a cyber helpline number (1930) to assist people and address grievances, we also have a dedicated team of officers and constables at every police station who are regularly trained, and are experts in detecting cyber crime cases.

How is Mumbai police planning to control the drug issues in the city?
We have doubled our efforts against drug abusers and are conducting awareness programmes, wherein our local police teams counsel students and residents in schools, colleges and housing societies. So far, we have conducted 2,000 such programmes this year. It is on top of the agenda list of both Mumbai police and the government, for which we have increased action against drug peddlers and users. In 2023, so far we have registered 1,240 cases of possession of drugs, which was 583 last year. Also, we have recovered drugs worth Rs 450 crores between January and December 10.

We are also focusing on cutting off the supply chain of drugs to Mumbai city. We have conducted multiple raids outside the city too, as in a recent case wherein we busted a factory manufacturing mephedrone, and a key supplier in the drug chain Lalit Patil who we arrested. Apart from this, with BMC’s help, we have demolished 2,500 pan stalls operating near schools and colleges so that students are not lured into addictions to various substances. Around 25,000 cases under Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act were registered against those who sell tobacco illegally.