Ahmedabad city’s top cop Sanjay Srivastava, an acute and painstaking police man opens his heart to The Ombudsmanews on how he could successfully handle the two waves of pandemic in city, city people and his staff
Hemington James
theombudsmanews@gmail.com
“At the end of the year 2019 had anyone conceptualised that the situation would go this far? No one. Which means everything came as a thunderbolt and bombshell to all. In the first and the second wave of the Corona pandemic, many of us were left upset and devastated. In this situation if police become rude and ruthless where would people go?”
People’s Safeguards
“We don’t want to give that impression to people that cops knowing the laws and being the executors become hard-hearted. We also have lost many of our policemen but that does not stop us being safeguards for people. In the beginning only, we had instructed our men not to be harsh with people,” said the top cop and added that, “That also does not mean to be careless about the prosecution of law and order. Hence, the clear message to the entire department was to be courteous and polite but firm. Not allowing any situation for which we have to regret later.”
Dangerous and threatening outcry
“The second wave was more fatal, dangerous and destructive. We saw people crying with bodies of their loved ones in the hospital premises. Cops were there to maintain law and order. There was chaos at many points as the heartburn relatives would cry out to the doctors and the paramedics, alive patient was no more within a few hours. All these happened in front of cops, we could understand the circumstances of the relatives and family members. The outcry was dangerous and threatening but we are duty bound and we did not allow anything unpleasant to happen.”
Thank you Amdavad
“There always were probabilities of unrest between cops and people as citizens being stopped to check whether they were masked or not, what was the cause of getting out even during lockdown. But, things did not go haywire and the police kept calm. We also thank people for understanding our situation and cooperating with us.”
Change of strategy
Our (both local and traffic) prime focus is to see that there is peace and harmony in the city and collecting money in the form of fine is never the motto. However, to make people realise sometimes we have to collect fines. But, we instead of doing so we clinched for safety and well being of people. Penalising only those who were and are unmasked.”
Transposing vehicles
Generally, the cranes we had (hired) and have (owned by the police) were used to lift the vehicles obstructing the smooth movements on the road. But, this time instead, we decided to lift the vehicle from the those intruded places to safe places ensuring the safety of the vehicle. We even did not take the service of the hired cranes which otherwise lift the vehicles to make money.”
Ahmedabad city Police commissioner Sanjay Srivastava is an IPS (Indian Police Service) from 1987 batch. He is of Director General of Police (DGP rank in Gujarat state. He took charge of the city in August 2020. Before he became the top cops of Ahmedabad city, he was heading CID -Crime in Police Bhavan, Gandhinagar.