Hyderabad: Sakala Nerastula Samagra Survey, a comprehensive collection of data related to criminals, initiated by The Telangana state police has exposed lack of coordination between different police units in the state. As per the police manual, any arrested person’s details should be sent to the police station, in the limits of which he actually hails from, and the police station concerned should keep track of the arrested person, his movements and update it from time to time to the station in which he/she was arrested. But as this practice has not been followed, it is now difficult to trace these suspects through this survey.
Address of most of the old offenders have been traced, but the accused are not staying there now. Through the data received till now, only 50 percent of the criminals could be traced. Meanwhile, the way the survey is being conducted and the details of the offenders being collected during the survey have drawn criticism from various circles. While the details of acquitted persons are collected, it does not include government officials, public servants, police and politicians , who are accused and facing charges in different cases registered against them.
During the survey, the police is collecting the details of the entire family tree of an offender, the details of relatives along with their address and telephone numbers. In case he is a tenant, the house owner’s details and contact numbers are also being collected for records, which has now become a big trouble for the officers.
“To some extent, many accused are willing to share the family details and contact numbers but it is difficult to collect the details of relatives and even house owners, which is not needed. There is opposition in collecting data,” an inspector based in the city said.
An official said that as per the manual, the details of the accused (‘roll’) should be sent to the police station in which the accused’ address is located and if he is a repeated offender, a sheet should be opened and communicated to the police station. “Since this was not followed properly, it has now become difficult. At least now, that the technology is advanced, this should be followed so as to ease surveillance,” an official said.
Survey not to create panic in people: Cops
The police department came out in support of the survey, saying it was aimed only at collecting data of all arrested offenders from 2008 to 2017 and not to terrorise them or create panic among people.
After the TS COP mobile was launched on January 1, the TS police took up the exercise of enumerating and geo-tagging all professional and repeat offenders to make the state crime-free. All past criminal records with respect to serious crimes, organised ones and all property offences and the persons involved in these were included in the survey. This data was to help lay a special focus on the repeated and professional offenders.
DG Mahendar Reddy in an official statement earlier said a matrix of all the databases would give a 360 degree profile of all offenders and their current activities. The entire database of criminals in the state would be uploaded to the Crime Data Analytics Unit of the TS COP mobile application. This would enable police officers to mount a continuous surveillance over criminals and monitor their activities by accessing information in real-time while on field duty.
Meanwhile, officials involved in the survey said crimes falling under 20 different categories were included in the survey and persons arrested for those offences were to be enumerated.
The details of acquitted persons were also being collected, as their acquittal was due to lack of evidence.
“That does not mean he is not involved in the offence or he is innocent. Many SHOs are following the system of sending rolls as well,” the officials said.
