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The
report of the NCRB for 2012 stated that 7,714 murder cases ended in
conviction, while 13,339 were acquitted.
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Every state police manual gives prime
importance to crime detection.
n an important policy decision, the Supreme Court asked (7
January) all state governments "to formulate a procedure for taking
action against all erring investigating or prosecuting officials" for
lapses in investigation or prosecution of criminal cases which end in
acquittals. The Court did this after being compelled to acquit a man due to
lack of conclusive evidence after he was charged with a heinous crime of
raping and killing a minor girl and severing her feet to steal her anklets.
We have seen acquittals in criminal cases all over the country
rising. I shall deal with only murder cases. The report of the National Crime
Records Bureau (NCRB) for 2012 stated that 7,714 murder cases ended in
conviction, while 13,339 were acquitted during the year. However this does
not reveal the full picture. In 2012, a total of 186,986 cases were brought
to trial, which included the previous year's pending cases but trials were
completed only in 21,653 cases. At the end of the year, 165,021 trials were
pending, which would have been taken up in 2013. Although comparison may not
be appropriate, it might be useful to glance through the statistics from UK
for 2012. In England and Wales, a total of 540 homicide cases were reported,
of which 170 ended in conviction, 16 ended in acquittal, 60 went undetected,
29 resulted in death or suicide of suspects, 1 was insane, while 264 were
pending trial.
Every state police manual gives prime importance to crime
detection. In the 1960s, Maharashtra regulations insisted that each directly
recruited sub divisional police officer (SDPO) should personally investigate
six serious crimes in a year. An SDPO had to camp at the site of serious
crimes in rural areas with mandatory halt for each undetected case. He had to
write to the crime register of his sub division, based on case diaries
received from police stations. In those days, the police prosecutors were
supervised by the superintendents of police, facilitating close contact
between investigation and preparation of evidence in courts.
However, police prosecutors were placed directly under the
state government in the 1970s on lofty ideas of total separation of
prosecution from the executive. We need to consider dispassionately how far
this led to the present state of affairs leading to a decline in convictions
in the court.
Also, we have not been able to find any solution to several
peripheral factors that affect the final fate of criminal cases in court.
Deliberate mischief in investigation or negligence in prosecution is not the
only reason why important cases end in acquittal. NCRB statistics say that
158,120 murder cases that were pending trial by the end of 2011, were taken
up in 2012, making a total of 186,986 brought to trial. As stated above,
165,021 cases were pending trial by the end of 2012.
During this long pendency, several factors work against
prosecution. First, witnesses could be tampered with. We have found no
satisfactory system by which important witnesses could be sanitised from
threats or inducements. In a murder trial, which was decided on 8 January
2014 in Mumbai, the accused woman who had allegedly thrown kerosene on a
22-year-old neighbouring girl causing her death over sudden quarrel in 2011
was acquitted despite the victim's dying declaration. One of the reasons was
the testimony of the victim's brother, cited as defence witness, who did not
support the prosecution story, saying that "a bunch of women" had
burnt his sister and not just one.
Second, mandatory transfer orders of investigating officers
(IO) create problems in preventing witness tampering. After an IO's transfer,
no one is interested in that case.
Third, a large number of cases get acquitted due to what is
called "tampering" with the case exhibits. Although the exhibit is
supposed to be the property of the court, it never shifts from the police
station where shortage of space prevents its safe storage. Thus, when the
exhibit is produced after several years for trial, it might be in a damaged condition.
My submission is that unless we address all these peripheral
issues at the state level, the landmark Supreme Court judgement might not
have much effect on the fate of cases.
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