In 2014, police of Hyderabad and Cyberabad did what their counterparts in many other metros couldn’t –reduce road accidents and fatalities in road crashes considerably- in the past several years.
Within these two Commissionerates, never in the past 15 years so many lives were saved by controlling road accidents. Surely, our police deserve a pat on their back for becoming role model for other cities in bringing down road crashes.
Yet, it has to be remembered here that last year 1,300 people died in road crashes in Hyderabad and Cyberabad and it is no small number. “Zero fatal accidents is too optimistic a goal but nothing is wrong in striving for it,” remarked Rajeev Lochan, Director, Road Safety, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways at a meeting recently. While the overall crime rate in both the Commissionerates was more or less the same, some offences like outraging the modesty of women and rapes have considerably gone up.
Police authorities tried to reason that outraging modesty complaints went up because police encouraged more women to come forward for taking action against persons misbehaving with them.
“Encouraging women to lodge complaints is not the issue. Securing conviction to the accused by taking the cases to logical end would bring down such offences,” points out a police officer. With the Telangana government providing new vehicles to the police, the latter can no longer take lame excuses of reaching a crime scene late or difficulty in chasing a fleeing offender.
With new patrol vehicles and bikes for Blue Colts, there is enhanced presence of police on the road.
How far the police can improve their time of responding to distress call - be it a road accident or chain snatching- is important.
Hyderabad police introduced the system of collecting random feedback from people on the behaviour of policemen of each police station. Still, many people are worried from going to the next level of police official if he was not content with the response at police station or an Assistant Commissioner of Police.
