Bangalore citizen

Bangalore citizen takes Twitter route to get cops to act

 

BANGALORE: Iftikar Pasha joined Twitter in the beginning of this month. Not to socialize or make friends. It was his desperate attempt to open a line of communication with the city police commissioner.

A KG Halli resident and private firm employee, Pasha had been getting threat calls from unknown persons for the past four months. The threats began after he lost cash worth Rs 4 lakh and 100 grams of gold in a robbery at his house, and approached police.

After his attempts to contact jurisdictional police officers went in vain, a paranoid Pasha took the Twitter route to reach the police commissioner. He tweeted twice about the threat calls, on August 5 and on August 13. "Sir please help me as I am in very big problem from goondas," he tweeted again in the early hours of Sunday. Commissioner MN Reddi promptly responded, "My office will call you soon."

Subsequently, KG Halli police visited Pasha's house to collect information about the case. The said they have sent to Delhi Police, the telephone number from which Pasha received calls. They were confident of tracking the caller.

What happened

In March this year, Pasha's house was burgled when the family had gone to visit his father in hospital. There were no signs of forced entry and it was found that the house was opened using a duplicate key. In his police complaint, Pasha had said that it could be the handiwork of someone known to him. However, police failed to trace the culprits. Soon, Pasha started getting threat calls from a Delhi number, asking him to withdraw the complaint. Pasha sought police help again but neither was the burglary case cracked nor did the nightmare of the threat calls end.

Tweet your troubles, ideas

@cpblr, the official twitter handle of the Bangalore police commissioner, has been getting it all ?complaints, suggestions, a pat on the department's back and in some cases even criticism. Two recent tweets talked about the rude behaviour of cops at a police station. While a netizen wanted to know the status of investigation in the recent rape case involving a child from an east Bangalore school, another wanted changes in the traffic management system.

Reddi has been replying to most of the tweets and has assured citizens that the practice will continue even after his term ends.