The Police Complaints Authority, Puducherry, has been re-constituted with Justice G. Rajasuria, former Judge of the Madras High Court as Chairman and R. Balaraman, advocate, Puducherry, and M. Premalatha Malarmannan, as its Members and Yasam Lakshmi Narayana Reddy, Additional Secretary (Home) as its Convenor-cum-Secretary.
With this, the public have one more forum to approach for specific complaints as defined under para 3 of the Government Order (G.O. Ms. No.71, dated 9/12/2016). The functions of the Police Complaints Authority will be to inquire into allegations of “serious misconduct” such as death in police custody, grievous hurt, rape or attempt to commit rape, arrest, or detention without due process of law, extortion, land/house grabbing or any incident involving serious abuse of authority against police personnel either suo motu or on a complaint received from a victim or any person on his/her behalf, the National or the State Human Rights Commission, the police, or any other source. The authority shall inquire into a complaint of such arrest or detention, only if it was satisfied prima facie about the veracity of the complaint.
In the cases directly inquired by the authority, it may, upon completion of the inquiry, communicate its findings to the police officer heading the police force in the Union Territory with a direction to register a First Information Report and/or initiate departmental action based on such findings, duly forwarding the evidence collected by it to the police.
The directions of the authority should ordinarily be binding, unless for the reasons to be recorded in writing, the UT administration decides to disagree with the findings of the authority. The authority may submit its findings in a case within 60 days from the date of receipt of the complaint and in case of inability to meet the deadline; the authority may submit a report showing reasons therefore to the administrator.
Police Complaints Authority can act suo motu or on a complaint received from a victim or any of the person on his/her behalf, National Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Committee, Puducherry, the police or any other source.
The public are hereby informed that any complaint against any police personnel or police officers of the Union Territory of Puducherry shall be addressed to the Convenor-cum-Secretary, Police Complaints Authority, Home Department, Chief Secretariat, Puducherry.
