Crime Capital: 93K arrested in over 2 lakh cases in 2016
NCRB DATA In last five years, crimes jumped up by 286% and arrests increased by 128%
NEWDELHI: On an average, 255 persons were arrested every day in Delhi in 2016 for various offences like murder, rape and robbery. In total, the number of cases registered under the Indian Penal Code were 2,09,519.
While the crimes in 2016 spiked by 10% compared to 2015, the number of arrested persons increased by 33%, according to data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for 2016 showed.
However, the NCRB report showed that of the 93,168 persons arrested in 2016, the police were able to file chargesheets of only about 58% of all persons.
In the last five years, crimes jumped up by 286% and arrests increased by 128%.
Of the 27,467 arrested persons whose cases were heard in the courts, only 12,839 — about 46.7% — were convicted. A total of 12,184 persons were acquitted and another 2,444 persons were discharged by the courts. The data for the same for years 2015 and 2014 was not available with the NCRB.
A person is discharged when there are not sufficient grounds for him/her to proceed with a court trial. Acquittals happen after a court trial.
INCREASE IN ARRESTS
Experts said that the police must prioritise strengthening the investigating teams rather than focusing on arrests. “The police need to be more discreet in arrest- ing people, particularly in nonheinous offences. If an accused is available for questioning, he or she need not be arrested,” said Ved Marwah, former Delhi Police commissioner.
RK Kapoor, a Supreme Court advocate and an expert on criminal law, attributed the high number of arrests to the police’s “unwillingness to put much effort into investigations”.
“First of all, the Delhi Police personnel are poorly trained. Then, their manpower is mostly consumed for non-investigating purposes such as providing security to VIPS. So, they arrest people so that they can torture the suspects into giving a statement and revealing everything. That way, they do not have to put in much effort to investigate,” said Kapoor.
Nitai Mehta, the trustee of Praja Foundation, an NGO that frequently surveys the crime trends in Delhi, said that the arrests figures did not matter as long as the difference in the conviction and acquittal figure was not high.
“A higher conviction can be obtained by having separate wings for investigations and improving the quality of public prosecutors,” said Mehta.
But, Madhur Verma, the Delhi Police PRO, called the recent spike in arrests a “positive sign for the society” and attributed the jump to the police force’s “zero tolerance policing”.
“Our aim is to nip crimes in the bud and deter small-time criminals from bigger offences. Sending criminals behind bars acts as 2012 2013 a major deterrence,” Verma told Hindustan Times.
Of the persons arrested in Delhi last year, nearly 98% were men. Close to 88% of the arrested persons were in the age group of 18 and 45.
CHARGESHEET RATE
Verma attributed the poor chargesheet rate to three aspects. “Forensic reports often take months to arrive and we cannot 2014 2015 2016 proceed without that. The workload is too high and there are investigators handling as many as 50 cases at once. Thirdly, there are cases in which charges don’t get substantiated and it takes time to file closure reports in them,” he said.
CONVICTION RATE
The officer said that poor conviction rate should not be seen as a sign of wrongful arrests. Persons acquitted
“If a suspect’s role in a crime in not proved beyond the shadow of doubt, it does not necessarily mean he or she was wrongly arrested. We analyse acquittals at multiple levels and go for further appeals in several of these cases. In many cases, we arrest thieves and snatchers, but they get acquitted because we were not able make a complete recovery of the stolen items from them,” said Verma.