Police underplay most cases: former top cop

If records of the Noida Police are to be believed, there were just two rapes, 14 robberies, nine murders and 33 snatching cases in 2008.

If records of the Noida Police are to be believed, there were just two rapes, 14 robberies, nine murders and 33 snatching cases in 2008.

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But a former top cop has a different story to tell. Retired Deputy Superintendent of Police K.K. Gautam said, “These figures are manipulated. FIRs are not registered and even when they are 10 or 20 cases are clubbed in one FIR. Moreover, a robbery case is mostly registered as theft and theft as missing. Unless the crime figure shows an increase, one cannot ask for more force.”

SP City, Noida A.K. Tripathi, however, defended the figures. “The problem lies in misinformation by complainants. If it is a theft they try to register a robbery complaint. We do register it the way they tell us but when the case is solved it turns out to be much simpler, so we change the sections,” he said.

“People tend to overplay it and this creates problems. So what looks like a kidnapping case turns out to be a case of person who wilfully went along,” he added.

Two best examples of police burking (trying to suppress a case) are the Aarushi double murder and Nithari cases. In the latter, the police refused to take down a single complaint, even as children kept disappearing for almost two years.

“The police said the children might be eloping or running away. They registered a case under missing section (and not kidnap), so almost no child was ever searched. Even in the Aarushi murder case, I was the one who found Hemraj’s body. The police had pronounced him guilty even before starting the investigation,” said Gautam.