As many 1,557 accused were detained in the last four years in the city limits under the provisions of the Goondas Act, which is aimed at preventing them from coming out of prison for a year.
However, though 628 detentions were revoked by the Advisory Board constituted under the Act and 925 detentions were revoked by Madras High Court, the detenues had to be in prison for an average of 129 days in the four years, a study revealed. Only 8% of offenders were incarcerated for the maximum duration of the detention period, i.e. 331 days to 365 days.
In the last four years, the police have detained 1,557 persons under the Act. Of this, the highest number of detentions was made in 2019 with 529, followed by 424 in 2022.
City Police Commissioner Shankar Jiwal said, “It can be seen that 352 offenders were detained for their involvement in the first instance of the case itself, but the criteria used for this are very stringent – murder cases involving rowdyism, where the accused and other persons’ lives continue to be under threat, and in severe cases of white collar crimes with a lot of victims.”
Overall 735 criminals, even after stringent action, failed to turn over a new leaf, and it was observed that repeat offences tended to become the way of living for the recidivists. Thus, there needs to be a special intervention programme by the authorities concerned.
The expression ‘habitually’ was omitted in 2014 and since then, offenders with a single case have also been detained. As many as 352 offenders with a single case were detained in the last four years, while 1,205 with two to over 10 previous cases have been detained in the same period.
Mr. Jiwal said due diligence was followed in analysing the proposals for detention under the Goondas Act. As such, 135 proposals were rejected by senior police officers in the last four years, with 2021 seeing the maximum number of rejections with 60, followed by 28 in 2020.
Out of all the offenders detained in the last four years under detention laws, 47% were history-sheeters.
