Pune, Dec 19 (Agency) Ritesh Kumar took over as new police commissioner of the city from outgoing chief Amitabh Gupta at police headquarters here on Sunday. Talking to UNI, Kumar, the 1992-batch IPS officer, said that his top priority is that every citizen should feel safe and fearless. When asked about how he would tackle crimes in city, he said that since “prevention is better than cure”, he will try to control crimes. The new city police chief assured that he will also give priority in preventing crimes against women and cyber crimes while maintaining law and order in city. On MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act), he said that its implementation will continue as it is part of crimes detection and prevention measure. Talking about basic policing, he said that his focus will also be on basic policing.
“Our focus will be more on street crimes, chain snatching, and proper action will be taken against criminals,” he asserted and underscored importance of the community’s involvement in controlling crimes and maintaining peace. On traffic management in Pune city, Kumar promised to improve traffic management in a big way. Although the vehicular traffic in entire city has been affected due to ongoing work of the Metro rail, he said that “in spite of that we have to make good decisions to improve traffic in the city. The smooth flow of traffic is most important for common people travelling on city’s roads.” When asked about his message to Punekars, the new CP said that no one should be scared to approach any police station in the city anytime and assured that they will try to give very good service to people.