Patnaik Delhi Police boss now; pledges women safety, improving

Amulya Kumar Patnaik today formally took charge as commissioner of Delhi Police and said his focus will be to improve the perception about the force, digitising its functioning, ensuring women safety and "reach out to people from all sections of the society".
Patnaik (57), who superseded two officers to succeeded Alok Kumar Verma, who was appointed the CBI director, said the relationship with the Delhi government "has been fine all along".
He becomes the 21st commissioner of the force, which has a strength of close to 80,000 personnel.
"We will work on ensuring that the perception of Delhi Police is better in the eyes of the public. I have grown with this force for more than 30 years.

"Delhi Police is one of the best in the country. It is definitely the most hard-pressed in the country and is doing a wonderful job. But still somehow, somewhere, the perception about police, I think needs to be made a little better and we will work on it," he stressed.
Patnaik also said the focus will be on making women feel safer in the national capital.

"Women safety will always remain an area of priority. Safety of children and senior citizens will remain an area of priority. We will do our best to further see how women in the city can feel safer," he said while speaking to mediapersons.

As the Commissioner, Patnaik inherits a range of pending cases, the Sunanda Pushkar's death and disappearance of JNU student Najeeb Ahmed.
Today, when he was quizzed about the two cases, he didn't answer. Questioned on the "uneasy relationship" between Delhi Police and the Delhi government, he said, "it (the relationship) has been fine all along".
The 1985-batch AGMUT IPS officer superseded two seniors, Dharmendra Kumar and Deepak Mishra, both 1984-batch IPS officers of the AGMUT cadre.
The commissioner said the force will try to "reach out to people from all sections of the society".
"Our public grievance redressal system is good and we are able to reach out to public and public can meet officers at any level. But we will still see where exactly we can improve further. The effort will be to reach out to the people of all sections of the society," he said.

Patnaik also said digitisation and tackling cyber crimes will also be among the key focus areas.
"We will focus also on digitising the police functioning. Digitisation will be an area of priority. We can see how much we can work on it.
Patnaik said the Cyber Cell of Delhi Police is "already doing a great job" and steps have been taken to ensure there are cyber units at district level. He said more people will be trained on how to tackle cyber crimes.
"We are in the process of training a lot of people on cyber crime and cyber offences, how to investigate them and that process will continue," he said.

Patnaik's predecessor Verma had always asked his officers to curb street crimes, and the new top cop reiterated him.
As commissioner of Delhi Police, Patnaik will have one of the longest tenures. Patnaik will retire in January 2020 after three years of service as Delhi's top cop.
Patnaik was earlier posted as the Special CP (Administration), where he was part of the team which effected the recent large-scale promotions in Delhi Police.
Earlier in the day, Verma was given a farewell parade where many of the personnel, who were part of the massive promotions granted to 26,000 personnel during his tenure, shouted slogans in his praise.

"It is time to bid farewell. As commissioner, my first priority was to curb street crimes and provide security to women and children. It is with your support that I achieved success in all these spheres in 2016. This has been possible due to your hard work," he told the personnel at the farewell.
Later in the day, Verma was given a farewell near the front lawn to the sounds of dhol and the top brass of Delhi Police wishing him luck for his new assignment.