BENGALURU: The city police have restructured the squads in the Central Crime Branch (CCB) to face growing challenges, to have a special focus, and carry out an effective intelligence gathering and investigation. With the existing squads, an Anti-Terrorist Cell (ATC) has also been introduced.Earlier, there were five squads — Organised Crime Wing (OCW), Special Enquiry (SE) squad, Women & Narcotics (W&N) squad, Fraud and Misappropriation (F&M) squad and Homicide & Burglary (H&B) squad — in the CCB. Now, making changes in the structure of the organisation, six wings have been formed.
Meanwhile OCW, which deals with rowdy-sheeters’ activities and organised crimes, and the SE squad that handles cases referred by courts and senior officers, have been retained, but four new wings have been formed. Giving importance to women safety and tackling drug menace, W&N squad has been split into Women Protection Wing (WPW) and Anti Narcotic Wing (ANW). The WPW will deal with crimes against women, prostitution and human trafficking, while ANW will focus only on putting a break to drug peddling and supply of narcotic substances.
As the number of financial fraud cases are seeing an increase in the city, Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has been established and the wing will investigate cases related ponzi schemes, cheating cases involving huge amount of money and financial frauds.Meanwhile, to gather intelligence about terrorism related activities in the city and to investigate cases related to terrorism, Anti-Terrorist Cell (ATC) has been set up.
Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Sandeep Patil said, “Since narcotics and women protection are very important, we need to have separate wings for them. When both were in a single wing (W&N), it was difficult for officers to focus on both. So, the W&N wing will work only to control drug menace and H&B squad staff will work in women protection wing, while OCW will take care of the works that were done by H&B squad.”
Adding that all wings will be headed by an officer of the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police, Patil refused to divulge more information about the functioning of the ATC. “They (ATC) have been given specific tasks, which cannot be made public. They will have jurisdiction over Bengaluru city,” he said.