Smart city 2016: ‘Let’s make it a safe city’

A city will never be safe with the land mafia active in the city, says Sunil Ramanand.

It has been brought to the fore many times that only a safe city can be a smart city. With city’s population going up every year and increase in need for civic amenities and housing, the land prices have skyrocketed. This has led to an emergence of land mafia. Their modus operandi, is that they engineer a land dispute when none exists and move in for what they call a settlement.

A city will never be safe with the land mafia active in the city. We have taken stringent action against these syndicates and I am happy to state that we have taken a record number of action against these gangs under MCOCA and MPDA in one calender year. But at the same time, we are conscious of the fact that once the first hierarchy criminals from gangs are behind bars, second strata becomes active. But we are sure that if we continue to be firm, we will also be able to tackle this problem.

The street crime like chain-snatching and road robberies are another concern we need to work upon. We would categorise them in two types. In the first type of case, the habitual offenders are involved, which we have been able to take stock of to a lot of extent. We have put some of the gangs of habitual robbers behind bars and have also invoked MCOCA in some of the cases. The other type, where the non-habitual offenders are involved, we have been figure out ways to crack.
The technology in the form of CCTV surveillance will definitely be of great help as we get concrete clues which can later be used in the court proceedings. But human surveillance is more important that. It is the network of human sources that is ultimately going to help us crack the cases. And it is beyond doubt that early detection is the best form of prevention. I am sure that with a very elaborate network of Pune city crime branch, we will be able to control crime much better in the coming year.

Sunil Ramanand is joint commissioner of police

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