There is a huge gap between police busting a crime and securing conviction to the accused. A lot has been said on how to bridge the gap and improve the conviction rate.
These discussions and remedial measures apart, some investigators ensure the accused are not let off due to lacunae in gathering clues or building up the case. Recently the Crime Investigation Department sleuths, with better presentation of evidence and prosecution, got the accused convicted in two different cases.
A sexagenarian from Engineers Colony of Yellareddyguda, D. Bheem Rao, secured Rs. 40 lakh loan from Vasavi Bank for establishing a printing unit.
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He was accused of using the money for personal purpose. The CID charge-sheeted him for cheating, criminal breach of trust, forgery and using forged documents as genuine. The prosecutors effectively used the documentary evidence of his loan application and diversion of loan amount to prove that he cheated the bank and breached the trust. Rao was punished with two-year rigorous imprisonment and imposed fine of Rs. 1,000.
While the documentary evidence came in handy for the prosecutors and investigators in this case, a complicated case was that of an attack on the staff of Niloufer Government Hospital at Red Hills in 2007 by a group of persons.
One of the accused was late legislator Afsar Khan who died during the trial. There were two separate cases related to the incident. Two persons allegedly attacked the staff while seven others were accused of threatening and abusing the staff.
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The nine accused were found guilty and awarded jail terms. Unlike the first case, investigators couldn’t rely on documents to secure conviction.
They made painstaking efforts to make the persons deposing evidence stick to their versions and successfully connected the accused with the crime.
Misuse of
social media
Social media plays an important role in bringing people together and strengthening bonds between people irrespective of their caste, creed, gender or country people make relationships.
Of late, social networking sites including Facebook and WhatsApp are used by some persons with ulterior motives to spread misinformation and hurt religious sentiments in a bid to foment trouble.
For instance during the recent encounter killings in Nalgonda district the social media was abuzz with different theories of the incident and every post or updates drew large number of pro and anti comments on the subject.
However, a few select groups and pages were filled with content aimed at targeting some particular groups or communities. Days later, few other persons utilised the social media to spread more rumours.
In this context it is necessary for police to identify the pages or groups and take up the issue with the companies and get the pages closed. In 2012, a similar exercise was done after the special branch alerted the police higher-ups about the risk it posed to the maintenance of peace in the city.
MARRI RAMU AND
ASIF YAR KHAN