Special Task force sought for organised crime

Mumbai: A Mumbai-based criminologist has filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking directions for the Union and state governments to set up special task forces to deal with the growing menace of organised crime, as the current police set up is not capable to handle these cases. The petition has based its assumptions on its study on the growing impact of organised crime that is going unchecked nationwide.

According to Snehil Dhall, who has filed the petition through Advocate Mareesh Sahay, virtual crime in India is increasing at a rapid rate. “The central government has made many laws like the TADA, MCOCA, UNTOC, FATF, UAPA, OCIS, GCOCA and OCIU but the police is ill-prepared to deal with these cases. As there are no special units to deal with cases that come under the purview of the above mentioned legislations, such crimes are growing unabated,” said Dhall, (27), who is a criminologist based in Mumbai.

He said that the petition has included ten Central ministries, 29 states and seven union territories as respondents, as they were all victims of organised crime. “As a criminologist, I spent five years studying the lacunae in the system and witnessed the shortcomings in the implementation of the legislations, and hence hope that the petition will get the desired directions,” said Mr Dhall. He added that lack of a proper court to try the cases was resulting in some cases being transferred from Tamil Nadu to Mumbai, which has a special MCOCA court. “Incidentally, Mumbai does not have a special unit to investigate MCOCA cases,” said Mr Dhall.

The petition lists a number of cases like money laundering by international organisations in the name of youth groups, conversion of terrorist groups into a legitimate trans national government structure and crimes committed through virtual platforms.