Top cop orders drive to clear one lakh pending cases

Delhi police commissioner Alok Kumar Verma has ordered to start a special drive to reduce pendency of cases in the national capital seeing that Delhi police has failed to investigate about half of the registered cases in the last three year.

Investigations into over one lakh criminal cases, including heinous crimes like murder, rape and dacoity, have been pending over the past three years. Hundreds of cases referred by VVIPs and the MHA are also pending investigation.

South Delhi tops the list of pending cases where as many as 22,885 FIRs are pending investigations. It is followed by Outer Delhi where the number of pending cases is 18,253. At a recent law and order meeting, Mr Verma was informed that that 66 references made by the MHA have been pending investigations for more than a month. He directed his officers to ensure that these references should be cleared at the earliest. He also told officers that if any VVIP reference required a detailed inquiry, interim report should be submitted till final report is ready. Special commissioner of police S.B.K. Singh, who was also part of the meeting, suggested that district DCPs should sit on weekends and clear all pending references.

The commissioner observed that there was a pendency of almost 40 to 50 per cent at each level. He directed that continuous efforts should be made to reduce pendency of cases and necessary approval for further investigation be obtained from the officer concerned, whenever required.

“Assistant commissioner of police heading Investigating unit of districts should visit the police stations and review the pending investigation cases. They should send their reports of district deputy commissioners of police and joint commissioners of police on a weekly basis,” Mr Verma said in his order. Mr Singh informed that a drive to review pending cases has been already been initiated and about 8,200 cases have been disposed so far.

The police have registered about 3.5 lakh cases in the last three years. The number of cases registered in 2011 was 53,353, which went up to 1,91,377 cases in 2015, an increase of about 258.7 per cent.

A senior officer said the registration of cases has increased over the years, but there has been no increase in the manpower of the force. “The issue needs to be addressed wisely and effectively. Cracking whip on investigating officers is not going to work. A single investigating officer handles around 200 cases every year, which is not humanly possible.”