VIJAYAWADA: Conviction Based Policing (CBP), which was implemented on a pilot basis in June last year, to correct the conviction rate in crime against women and POCSO cases has yield good results.The State has registered a conviction rate of 66 per cent. All thanks to the continuous pursuance of Director General of Police (DGP) Kasireddy Rajendranath Reddy and other district heads to expedite the trial in court.
As part of CBP, all the officers, including IPS rank officers (SPs, DCPs and ASPs), ACPs and station house officers (SHOs), were be asked to deal with at least five to 10 important cases each in their jurisdiction, monitor and guide officials in the prosecution in order to speed up the trial and increase the conviction rate.
Of the 120 cases identified, the trial was completed for 80 cases.Cases pertaining to crime against women, POCSO cases, and other grave crimes that caught public attention were pursued on pilot basis. “While three accused got death penalties, 30 were sentenced life imprisonment and the remaining 47 were awarded jail terms ranging from seven to 14 years.The conviction based policing helped us to expedite the legal process. This resulted in the conviction of 80 accused in less than a year,” DGP Rajendranath Reddy told TNIE.
“We have been spending at least one hour on a daily basis to review each case undertaken under CBP. Ground-level officers are being guided in such a way that there is no scope for the criminal to escape from law. We are planning to identify 13,000 cases under CBP by assigning five cases to all the 1,000 SHOs, sub-inspector, DSPs, SPs and commissioners in the State next year,” he added.
Meanwhile, the State police is planning to implement this first-of-its-kind exercise on a big way in the days to come. “This is a unique exercise as no State has seen such a jump in conviction rate in just one year. We are planning to give a presentation to Union Home ministry on to highlight the need of CBP,” the DGP elaborated.
Explaining about CBP, DGP Rajendranath Reddy said that it requires each unit officer (district SP and city police commissioners) to keep track of the progress of each day’s five most important cases (especially those that are related to women) under the purview of SP. He further explained that the key objective of this system is to ensure quick justice by punishing criminals within a shorter period.
“From collecting digital and scientific evidence to recording statements of victims, all are produced before the court within a stipulated period of time in order to finish the trial process in less than a month. For that we have strengthened forensic science laboratory capacity and cybercrime wing strength to meet the deadlines,” he explained.
According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics for the year 2020-2021, the conviction rate in the total 59,550 cases related to crime against women at court disposal was 5.6 per cent and 9,058 POCSO cases was 10.4 per cent.
“We are trying to bring a robust system where the officials will monitor cases till the end on a daily basis and measures to award punishment for the criminals through speedy process,” he stated.