Why do the police refuse to book cases when crime victims go to them for help?
Why do the police refuse to book cases when crime victims go to them for help?
The most popular English-language verb among Bangalore's Kannada-speaking policemen these days is 'burke', which means to suppress.
As victim after victim complained that the Bangalore police were just not interested in registering complaints, MiD DAY went around investigating why, and found the answers startling.
As an insider jokingly put it, the Bangalore police have become "figure conscious", and go that extra mile to keep crimes out of their books.
They call it "burking of offences", a trick that helps them avoid the wrath of their superiors.u00a0 "We get pulled up if the number of crimes in our jurisdiction goes up," said a senior policeman. "That's why we try to keep the numbers low."u00a0 Policemen hate to take up complaints about crimes in the area under their control. The victims are grilled over and over again before a complaint is registered, as happened in the case of Sanjana, who was assaulted near Vasanth Nagar. The police tried hard to suggest she was making up the story.
Go next door
Some sub-inspectors shoo away victims to neighbouring police stations on the pretext of jurisdiction.
If they can't avoid registering a case, policemen try to lessen the gravity of the offence. (For instance, an attempt-to-murder case is registered as an assault, and a robbery is registered as a theft).
Order violation
The law courts are aware of the problem. The supreme court has directed the police that complaints should be registered irrespective of jurisdiction. The station that registers a complaint should transfer the case to the jurisdictional police within a day. However, police officers regularly ignore the guideline. That's because they have a bigger worry in the form of departmental review meetings.
Police stations are graded at these meetings conducted by the top brass, who peer into files listing the number of complaints, and the detection and recovery rate.
If crime numbers are bigger than detection and recovery numbers, officers are blamed for the worsening law and order, and branded as inefficient.
Pressure to act
The top brass not only pull up jurisdiction heads, but also fix deadlines for them to crack cases. "This sometimes forces us to fix innocent people, or recover valuables by illegal means," an officer said. "And corruption increases." Officers thus try to dodge complaints to avoid getting the stick from their bosses.
Case 1
Notice to the victim
A girl received a notice from the police three weeks after she was attacked that her complaint was false.
But Bidari had told the media he had seen CCTV footage of the attack.
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Case 2
Assault victim grilled
Sanjana, a Tehelka reporter, was followed near Kodava Samaj and abused in Kannada and Hindi. She pushed one of the men and ran. He caught up and punched her. A scuffle ensued.
She got into an auto and escaped. "I do not know who those men were or why they attacked me," she said.
The police tried to burke the offence, and said Sanjana had political reasons for filing the complaint. They grilled her, and tried to suggest a friend who had helped take her car to a puncture shop was lying.
Case 3
Road rage victim harassed
A foreigner was attacked on February 17 at Sanjaynagar. She had stopped by the roadside to give biscuits to a dog and a puppy that she has been looking after for some time.
She heard a car approaching aggressively. The dog barked at the car, which provoked the driver to chase the dog and attempt to hit it.u00a0 When the dog lover protested, he reversed and tried to mow her down.u00a0 She took down the number: KA 01 MA 8218. It was a maroon Hyundai Accent.
"The police have been completely unwilling to take this attack seriously, shuffling me around to three different police stations and constantly discouraging me from filing a report," she wrote on her blog.
Her persistence paid off, and the police finally filed an FIR.
Why cops burke offences
>>To show 'efficiency' and get praise from senior officers.
>>To escape the bother of long-drawn investigations.
'We'll stop it'
Joint commissioner of police (crime) Alok Kumar admitted burking of offences is rampant, but said it had come down considerably after the top brass held awareness sessions for station staff.
"But it still exists among junior staff, and we should take it seriously," he told MiD DAY.
Alok Kumar promised to issue directions to his staff not to burke investigations.
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