MADURAI: Hearing a batch of petitions filed by victims of seven theft cases which were closed by the state police as ‘undetected’, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday directed the Home department to pay monetary compensation of 30% of the value of the stolen properties, which included gold and cash, to the respective petitioners within three months.
Justice B Pugalendhi, who passed the order, further told the state to consider setting up a special investigation team of experts in each district to investigate theft cases that have been classified under ‘undetected’ for more than five years. These teams should be provided with better infrastructure, powers, and pay, he added.
The judge observed that a perusal of the files of the above cases revealed that many of the critical steps of investigation, such as examination of local witnesses, use of forensic tools, review of CCTV, were either delayed or omitted altogether.
Even the memoranda from supervisory officers point out that these lapses were totally ignored. This pattern cannot be brushed aside as an isolated inefficiency; it reflects institutional neglect, the judge opined.
“When a crime remains undetected due to lapses or inaction of the investigating machinery, and the victim is left without recovery or closure for years, it constitutes a violation of Article 21 of the Constitution. The Court, as a guardian of fundamental rights, must step in to provide limited monetary relief as a measure of public law compensation,” Justice Pugalendhi said.
The compensation could later be recovered from the petitioners if the offender is nabbed and the stolen property is recovered and handed over to them, the judge added. He also clarified that the object of ordering such compensation is not to punish the officers concerned or to substitute civil damages, but to recognise the failure of the system as a whole and to impose corrective responsibility upon the State.
He then directed the Director General of Police to implement the recommendations made by a committee headed by the ADGP, State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB), Chennai, which suggested intimating the complainant before filing an ‘undetected’ report, use of crime and occurrence sheets, and maintaining and analyzing the register of undetected cases.
The SCRB should review undetected cases every quarter, and the DGP should issue a circular to the police officials, ensuring review of such cases, he added.
He later directed the DGP (Training) to design refresher courses for investigating officers on evidence preservation, forensic procedures, and victim communication. The seven cases included theft or burglary of several sovereigns of gold and cash from the petitioners residing in various districts in the state.