Bengaluru: After the recent spurt in heinous crimes in recent weeks against women and children that set off a wave of public anger for its failure to act swiftly to bring the culprits to book and gave the IT capital the new moniker of rape capital, the State government on Monday shunted out the City's top cops — Commissioner of Police Raghavendra Auradkar and Additional Commissioner of Police (Law & Order) Kamal Pant.
Mr Auradkar, an Indian Police Service officer of 1987 batch has been replaced by ADGP (Law & Order) M.N. Reddi, who is also the seniormost ADGP in the State. He belongs to the 1984 IPS batch and has earlier served in the City as additional commissioner of traffic.
Inspector General of Police and Additional Commissioner of Police (Law & Order) Kamal Pant’s replacement is IGP, Police Grievance Cell Alok Kumar of the 1994 batch of IPS. Mr. Pant - an officer of the 1990 batch of IPS has been posted to the Police Grievance Cell in place of Mr. Kumar.
Alok Kumar's previous postings include the joint commissioner (crime) between February 2009 and August 2011, and deputy commissioner of police (South) in the City from September 2005 to January 2008.
While both officers are seen as highly effective with a good track record, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Home Minister K.J. George in giving in to pressure from their own ministers, the Opposition leaders and several senior bureaucrats to transfer Mr. Auradkar and his deputy are hoping that the new brass will live up to their reputations.
The government had come under pressure to effect a shake-up after the controversial 'clickgate' episode, when ADGP Ravindranath had charged Mr Auradkar with victimising him on caste grounds and registered a criminal case against him under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, that is being investigated by the Criminal Investigation Department.
However, while there were doubts over the veracity of those charges, the recent incidents of rape in the City, including of two minor girls turned the tide against Mr Auradkar, who was posted in April last year as the Commissioner on the eve of the Assembly polls on the orders of the Election Commission.
Seen as a clean officer, he had superseded his seniors from the 1982 batch onwards.
Can M N Reddi deliver?
The new City Police Commissioner M.N. Reddi is a hands-on cop. A postgraduate and M.Phil in sociology from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, he has held several executive posts including that of the additional commissioner of police, traffic in 2006 and 2007 in the City and was instrumental in the effective implementation of the B-TRAC - the flagship project on Bengaluru traffic management and safety. He was chairman and managing director of Karnataka State Police Housing Corporation before being posted as ADGP, Law & Order. Mr. Reddi is a tech savvy bureaucrat and is known for using technology in improving police functioning.
