Criminals must know that their crimes will not go unpunished

There are crores of cases that fall through the cracks in our criminal justice system, especially since most of them never make it to a police file.

The ministry of home affairs’ directive that the registration of first information reports (FIRs) be made mandatory (Let’s put FIRs things first, Our Take, December 30) is bound to be helpful in a number of cases that otherwise do not get registered due to political or administrative pressure. There are crores of cases that fall through the cracks in our criminal justice system, especially since most of them never make it to a police file. But one wonders what steps will be taken to address those crimes that are committed inside police stations themselves. Who will register FIRs for these crimes? We need a zero-deterrence system that will help remove the root cause of crimes: the assurance that they will not go unpunished.

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