Cops fudge to 'check' crime

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Cops fudge to 'check' crime
Times of India - New Delhi,India
... while the victim loses confidence in the police". Former joint commissioner of police Maxwell Pereira agrees, saying "such practices need to be exposed".

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Delhi/Cops-fudge-to-check-crime/articleshow/4668550.cm

Times of India: Delhi
Cops fudge to 'check' crime
18 Jun 2009, Rahul Tripathi , TNN

NEW DELHI: For 25-year-old city executive Abhishek Rana, a journey to Meerut on the night of May 23 turned into a nightmare. Overpowered in his own car and robbed of his belongings at Sarai Kale Khan, Rana was taken aback when he went to the cops. Instead of lodging a complaint, the police allegedly insisted that he provide a written statement saying his belongings were stolen while he was relieving himself by the roadside.

Speaking to Times City, Rana said, "The cops at Sarai Kale Khan asked me to write a complaint saying that I had stopped the car. But that was not the case.'' And Rana is not alone. It appears that Delhi Police, in an attempt to keep the spiralling robbery figures under control, at least on paper, is refusing to record robbery cases, or showing them as thefts and snatchings. The practice is quite old.
In April, when a 25-year-old teacher was robbed of her belongings by armed assailants in Timarpur and she lodged a complaint at Dwarka, the cops registered a case of snatching. The IPC sections for snatchings and theft do not fall in the "heinous'' category.

In the latest incident at Mehrauli on Tuesday night, a collection agent was robbed by two bike-borne robbers. Victim Ravinder Kumar was carrying Rs 4 lakh in cash and was robbed at gunpoint. Though clearly a case of robbery, the Mehrauli police registered a case of theft.

Similarly, when a truck was looted in Mehrauli on June 11, the police registered a case of theft. They asked the truck driver to lodge a complaint stating he was relieving himself when four persons drove away his truck. The men had actually forced the driver to stop and overpowered him. They later dumped him at an isolated place.

Another instance was the arrest of Ravi Kapoor and his gang members, who were held for the Jigeesha Ghosh and Soumya Vishwanathan murders in March this year. Kapoor and his men were reportedly involved in another case at Delhi Cantonment where they had robbed a man who was going to the airport during the wee hours of March 9. But the police had registered a case of theft and claimed to have solved it with the arrest of Kapoor and four others.

Commissioner Y S Dadwal told TOI that "if something like this comes to our knowledge, we will take corrective measures. We have been able to so far solve 89 per cent of cases...a few such instances did come to light but we immediately took corrective measures.''

Former Delhi Police chief Ajai Raj Sharma believes "the best way to control crime is to register it'' because otherwise it helps the criminal while the victim loses confidence in the police''. Former joint commissioner of police Maxwell Pereira agrees, saying "such practices need to be exposed''.