‘We’re doing well, will nail crime by December'

The spate of double murders, killings of elderly couples, kidnappings and extortion in the city is threatening to shatter the political ambitions of deputy chief minister, R Ashoka, who is holding the home portfolio.

The murders have forced even Governor HR Bhardwaj to express his anguish. At an event on Monday, he came down heavily on the BJP government for failing to maintain law and order in the city. Then on Tuesday, the Congress, with its entire troupe of city MLAs, turned the heat on chief minister Jagadish Shettar, asking him to show some mettle or bow out with grace.

But it is having its effects. With the fear of public wrath building up, city’s police commissioner, BG Jyothi Prakash Mirji, is now facing a daunting task. In an exclusive interaction with DNA, Mirji said he was taking it as a challenge and has set December 2012 as the deadline to cut crime rate in Bangalore. He has ordered his men to strike terror in the hearts of criminals and achieve a drastic reduction in crime rate in the city to usher in a more peaceful 2013. In a way, it is planned as a pleasant New Year’s gift for Bangaloreans.

“All necessary steps have been taken by Bangalore police to ensure that crime rate is drastically brought down by the end of the year. We are already on the job to achieve this and, you will see, the year-end statistics will show results of our efforts,” a determined Mirji told DNA.

“I admit that in the month of August, many murders have taken place. But it does not mean that policing has failed. In the previous months, there were only a few murders, which no one noticed. I promise the people of Bangalore that the city is safe and they don’t need to panic and live in fear,” he said.

“I have been telling my men to go on regular beats and they are following it, but we will make it more stringent and bring the crime rate down. So far, we have done a fair job in controlling crime, but still, some incidents are occurring. The detection rate of cases is also high. We are cracking cases within a shorter span of time.”
Mirji, however, admitted that policing needed to be spruced up to ensure that the weaker and more vulnerable sections of society—the elders and women living alone—were properly protected. He said the tricky part was to determine in which parts of the city criminals were keeping tabs on elders and women living alone to strike at the opportune moment. That was the reason some incidents targeting such people had been occurring lately.

“We agree that we have to do some leg work so that the results will be better in the future,” he said.

He assured that the police establishment had intensified surveillance on goons and past offenders who were known to be prone to criminal activities affecting the innocent.