Terrorism prime focus of Pune’s first woman police chief

PUNE - Fighting terrorism will remain the biggest challenge, Pune’s new Police Commissioner Meeran Borwankar - the first woman to hold the post - said Thursday.

Referring to the Feb 13 blast at the German Bakery in upscale Koregaon Park area of Pune killing nine people including four foreigners and injuring 57, she said: “Incidents like these over the last couple of years had left a question mark on the security of the residents of the city. I want to keep a check on such incidents.”

Even as Borwankar takes over from Satyapal Singh, the blast case remains unsolved till date, despite the investigation being taken over by the Anti Terrorist Squad quite some time earlier.

Borwankar also urged women to come forward and register the crimes against them freely in police stations to help police take necessary action against the criminals.

“Instead of keeping their problems under the carpet, I want women to come forward freely without worrying about the consequences and register crimes against them,” she said.

The new police chief emphasised on freely registering crimes and said she will remain firm even if the crime rate goes up.

“People should come forward and register crime against them, be it women related or even general crimes. I am not to be concerned about statistics,” she said.

“I will not be worried even if the crime rate shoots up because that will give me a basis to do a reality check on the crime scenario in the city,” she added.

Borwankar said that she also intends to control infamous crime cases against women like the one when an IBM staffer was gang-raped in 2008 and went into a coma.

The outgoing police chief Satyapal Singh said that in his tenure, Pune’s crime rate has been kept under control. “This reflected in the affidavit we filed before Bombay High Court early this week,” he said.

Singh also said that when he took over as police chief of Pune, worsening traffic situation in the city posed a big challenge for him. “We implemented the I-Cop system in which we took the help of Blackberry phones to keep a record of traffic offenders,” he said.

“Using this technology we have been able to track repeated violators and have cancelled 1,200 driving licences in the last eight months,” he added.

Singh mentioned that the German Bakery blast, which happened during his tenure, was an unfortunate incident. “However, we were able to keep the law and order situation in the city under control,” he asserted.