Pune: Commissioner of Pune police Amitesh Kumar on Friday highlighted the need for a societal cleansing and announced that the department would soon launch an initiative named Drug Mukt Prabhag wherein local corporators would help enforcement agencies tackle the issue in their areas.Kumar mentioned the Porsche crash case where two young people had died in a drunk driving incident and said, “It brought to light a lot of issues of systemic corruption in various organisations of the govt. It exposed acceptance among the higher strata of the society to allow juveniles to do certain acts and then protect them for their misadventures.”The commissioner further said, “Yet the optimism is that the very same system’s well-oiled mechanism helped book the culprits.”Kumar was speaking on the sidelines of the release of a survey on addiction-vulnerabilities among the city’s youth at the police commissionerate. He described the survey’s findings as “extremely alarming,” especially since Pune is an educational hub and has over five lakh students residing in the city at any given point. He said, “Drugs and alcohol, of course, are a major cause of concern. Also, motor vehicle rules are probably the easiest to comply with, yet we see massive violations.”He said Pune faces a crisis where parents probably do not realise the lack of checks and balances in the PGs or flats where their children stay and their vulnerability on social media where they are exposed to all sorts of negative posts.Meanwhile, Kumar also said, “The police are trying hard to break the vicious circle of demand and supply chain of drugs. We need a revolution today, such that every individual keeps track of their children and illegal activities, and flags it to the police or the relevant authorities.” He emphasised that 10,000 police officers cannot be omnipresent in a city of 80 lakh people. The resources are always going to be limited... it is the people who have to come forward.Speaking about the Drug Mukt Prabhag initiative, the commissioner said, “We are speaking with newly elected corporators to clear their areas of the drug menace with help from the police and other enforcement agencies. We want them to assume ownership of the area, such that they act as a pressure group.”
