IE: Across police force, a tighter bond with the elderly: July 27, 2009

Mumbai: Since last month, the Colaba police have ensured that everyday their personnel visit the homes of at least five senior citizens and check on their welfare.
A fortnight ago, the Matunga police station sent notices to residential societies seeking details of senior citizens staying there.

For the past two weeks, the Kalachowki police have maintained a separate register on the number, name and details of every senior citizen visited daily.

The Azad Maidan police station has procured voters lists to identify senior citizens in its area.

A month after Mumbai Police Commissioner D Sivanandan issued all police stations a circular to implement measures for senior citizens’ safety, the cops have taken it to a new level of priority. Policemen have increased visits to homes, interacted with them on their problems and kept updating the data, which must be sent to headquarters.

Another circular, issued on Friday, directs police stations to send zonal DCPs weekly reports about the number of home visits made. These will be consolidated and sent to the ACP, Crime Branch.

“Earlier we counted senior citizens’ safety as an important responsibility but an additional one. Some senior citizens were listed and our beat marshals would visit them once a month or whenever they were free. Now, with crimes against senior citizens rising and following the circular, the police inspector holding the community portfolio has been given charge of maintaining updated data about senior citizens in every area,” said senior police inspector A Gadade of Bhoiwada.

“Every day in the past month, our officers have gone to several houses, especially those where senior citizens stay alone or with an elderly spouse, and collected information about family, neighbours, domestic helps and daily visitors like the milkman and the paperboy. In most crimes involving senior citizens, the culprits are known to the victim. We leave them with our numbers,” said Gadade, whose police station is investigating the murder of Pandharinath Kulkarni at his house last year.

Building relations with senior citizens has become the entire police station’s responsibility. “Whenever I am on patrol, I make it a point to stop at a junction where senior citizens congregate for an evening chat over tea and meet them. The Parsi Colony in our area has many elderly residents who stay alone. They didn’t want to entertain security measures at the cost of their privacy, so I approached Bomi Dhotiwala, who acted in Munnabhai MBBS, told him about our initiative and through him established a rapport,” said senior police inspector Vishnu Poman of Kalachowki.

Some senior inspectors have also taken the help of NGOs for data collection. Senior inspector Sunil Deshmukh of Matunga has begun co-ordinating with Dignity Foundation volunteers who collect data from senior citizens’ homes.

“We began our Dignity with Security project over a year ago in coordination with the police. We have volunteers collecting data on senior citizens in six zones. Officials from other zones too are approaching us now,” said the foundation’s Hemang Desai, who manages the project.