Lt. Governor Kiran Bedi on Saturday called for holding periodic parades of history sheeters and streamlining of record-keeping at police stations as a fundamental measure of reining in crime.
Ms. Bedi, who undertook an inspection of the Mudaliarpet police station, observed inadequacies in the indexing of history sheeter records, which betrayed gaps in surveillance of professional criminals that potentially led to incidence of organised crime.
Taking up the issue with S. K. Gautam, DGP, she issued a set of instructions to be followed across the tiers of the police hierarchy.
All officers from DGP, IGP, SPS have been asked to make daily visits to a police station to meet with beat and other officers to brief and debrief and check records.
History sheets of bad characters shall be directly maintained by the SHOs concerned. They will update these with their own observations on the whereabouts of these criminals. A close watch will be maintained on them through beat and other staff to know if anyone of them are active in crime.
The courts are to be approached for cancellation of bail or sureties forfeited of repeat and absconding criminals. Separate record is to be maintained of sureties so that they can be met with by SHOs and beat staff time to time.
A parade of past criminals must be held on a regular basis to see who is on the mend and who is still absconding. They will be called to PS with their sureties to vouch for their conduct. The beat officer must present them and provide the update on them.
A separate log will be maintained of action taken on Police Control Room calls and caller informed of action taken.
All preventive action must be taken under the law like preventive sections of criminal procedure code or Goonda Act to bind them down for crime prevention. The Lt. Governor also wanted regular subdivisional review meetings to share learnings in crime prevention and intelligence.
A review has been scheduled for next month to assess the progress made on instructions given.
Meanwhile, during the inspection at the Mudaliarpet police station, Ms. Bedi instructed that police stations saddled with impounded/confiscated property to seek resort to the courts to dispose of the articles. The Superintendent of Police and the Station House Officer were asked to update the records, make entries of sureties, record meetings with sureties, the next hearing dates, and the dates of inspection with observations.
The senior supervisory officers will have to carry out periodical inspection of these entries and take reviews as a long-term measure in prevention of crimes.
The Lt. Governor also directed the station house officer to maintain a separate log for the disposal of complaints that are received from Police Control Room (100).
In response to a request from residents, Ms. Bedi visited the LIG (Low Income Group) flats of the Murungapakkam Housing Board.
The residents of the apartments listed out their grievances regarding the pendency in transfer of title deed and maintenance related issues like drinking water, sewage pipeline, electrical faults and floor tile repairs. The officers of the housing board stated that the title deed has not been transferred since 2011 because the final cost of the apartments has not been arrived at.
The officers were instructed to submit a chronology of events of the construction and the handing over of the apartment tenements. They were also asked to come up with a plan regarding the transfer of title deeds and to solve the maintenance issues.
(EOM)
