Pending police cases in western Mumbai drastically down

Mumbai: Through consistent follow-ups with each police station, the West region police have managed to bring down the pendency of cases by more than 2000 in six months

Mumbai: Through consistent follow-ups with each police station, the West region police have managed to bring down the pendency of cases by more than 2000 in six months. The result, officers say, is extra time to focus on serious offences and other policing duties, resulting in a better quality of law and order in the region.

Pending police cases in western Mumbai drastically down

The West region, headed by an Additional Commissioner of Police, extends from Bandra up to Goregaon in Mumbai. For policing purposes, the area is divided into three zones, each headed by a Deputy Commissioner of Police, and has a total of 21 police stations.

According to Addl CP Vinayak Deshmukh, West region, a total of 7,706 cases were pending for investigation when he took charge of his post in April this year. These included crimes registered under the Indian Penal Code as well under Special and Local Laws (SLL) like the Arms Act, the Maharashtra Police Act and the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. However, as of September 30, of the total 14,545 cases registered in the West region so far, only 5,678 are still under investigation while the rest have been disposed of.

The same holds true for applications received by police stations in the region. While there were 6,008 applications pending in April, only 3,671 were pending at the end of September. The rest have either been converted into FIRs or, in cases which are not criminal, referred to the concerned courts.

“We have been holding in-person meetings with senior police inspectors of all police stations since April with the sole agenda of discussing the pending cases in each police station and the reasons behind them. Further, we take weekly video conferences where we once again review the pending cases and the work done on them. Investigating officers are under strict instructions to not delay cases wherever speedy disposal is possible,” Deshmukh said.

The additional CP added that particularly in cases like assault, theft, accident or other cases where the accused are caught within a short time, there was no reason to put cases on the back burner and add to the pendency in the region. As a result, chargesheets are immediately filed in the cases so that they may reach the concerned courts and the trials begin.

The initiative has thrown up some interesting insights into the various creative ways employed by ground-level policemen to shirk work. For instance, in a large number of cases, investigating officers were found to have drafted a chargesheet just to show that an investigation had been completed, but never filed it in court. All such cases were immediately sent to the courts after Deshmukh took charge.

“We also found that there were genuine delays in assigning case numbers to chargesheets in the concerned courts, Deshmukh said. “We made the investigating officers follow up with the courts till case numbers were assigned.”

Another aspect that came to light was that in many cases, when investigating officers were transferred from their postings, the case files got lost or were never turned over to a new officer. All such officers were contacted and made to find the missing files so that the investigation could be resumed and the cases disposed of.

“We also try to minimise the use of paper by registering Missing Persons Complaints and other such reports directly in the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS) portal instead of in written form. This also helps prevent misplacement of documents,” said Deshmukh.

The initiative has resulted in freeing up the massive backlog in police stations. For example, the Oshiwara police station, one of the busiest police stations in Zone IX, now has only 185 pending cases as of September 30, while the Versova police station only has 87.

Officers said that many cases were also pending because of stays on the investigation on the orders of various courts. Such cases apart, all police stations in the West region have been issued standing instructions to dispose of a case within 60 days of the offence being registered.

“If the quantity of cases decreases, the quality of investigation and policing automatically increases. Keeping cases pending for no reason only adds to the workload of a police station. This is an avoidable problem and we are making all efforts to avoid it,” said Deshmukh.