MUMBAI, July 4: In a high level meeting, State Home Minister, Gopinath Munde, police commissioner, R H Mendonca, joint commissioner of police (law & order) P S Pasricha addressed a gathering of businessmen at the Indian Merchants Chamber on Saturday evening.The meeting was called to discuss the grim situation in the wake of the increasing incidents of shootouts and extortion targetted against the city's business community of late, as also the deteriorating law & order scenario.Addressing the gathering, Munde said that in order to assuage the insecurity of the business community the State government was planning to set up special courts to deal with cases of extortion and economic offences.At the same time, he claimed that the overall crime rate in the state, particularly in the city had declined dramatically over the last three years, especially since the alliance government came to power.Munde said when the alliance government came to power in 1995, the main task was to deal with the law & ordersituation on three levels: Menace of organised crime, naxal menace in two districts of the State and cases of robberies on national and state highways. Stating that some top criminals continued to operate from foreign countries, Munde said the signing of extradition treaties with countries like United Arab Emirates would help tackle the problem.Mendonca too addressed the meeting and claimed that the people had begun to trust police more as was evident from the large number of complaints of extortion registered in Mumbai over the last few months.
