BHUBANESWAR: Director General of Police Abhay had a simple yet critical advice for his officers at the 62nd Senior Police Officers’ Conference on Sunday - focus on strong physical and scientific evidence, and not just on chargesheet numbers. “Professional investigation of all crimes remains a high priority. Large numbers of investigations have failed the trial test. Acquittal against total cases decided is high. We must improve our investigation and the follow-up during trial,” said the DGP.
His emphasis on professional investigation comes in wake of the sensational Nayagarh minor murder and rape where the case had remained undetected for about five months before Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik ordered an SIT probe which made the major breakthrough.
Sources said, the DGP advised that police must not rush for filing of chargesheet before making a professional work of the investigation, record of evidence to make for a water-tight case for prosecution.
Crime statistics would vouch for the State police chief’s concern. In 2019, chargsesheet was submitted in as many as 76,165 cases. At least 23,074 of them were pending from the previous year. However, the conviction rate was just 21.5 per cent. In 2018, the conviction rate was an abysmal 5.7 percent when over 66,000-cases were chargesheeted.
While the State has witnessed several sensational crimes in last few years, a major challenge for Odisha Police is the number of cases chargesheeted is not proportional to the number of convictions.“In other states, chargesheeted cases are a smaller proportion of the total cases registered but conviction rate is higher. In Odisha, it is the opposite and many cases are leading to acquittal,” said an officer.
A major reason, as discussed in the meeting, was lack of trained manpower and adequate infrastructure. Not all the districts have a scientific officer or are equipped with a mobile forensic van (MFV) for which crucial evidences are not secured in a professional manner.On the first leg of the four-day conference held on virtual mode amid the pandemic, Abhay said offences against women and children and cybercrimes must be given top priority.
A major highlight of the first day was success of against Left Wing Extremism (LWE) which has brought the State Police plaudits from the Centre. Increasingly pushing the Maoists to a smaller corner of Swabhiman Anchal and a drastic fall in Odia leadership among them were lauded at the meet. LWE violence and deaths occurring due to such incidents have witnessed a decline this year.
The DGP said, Odisha Police has written to the Centre to remove Angul, Boudh, Deogarh, Nayagarh and Sambalpur districts from Security Related Expenditure (SRE) scheme. Successful operations to curb coal and transportation mafia in Angul and Keonjhar districts, drive against adulterated food in Cuttack were presented at the meet.