Police ups checks on internal corruption

Collecting mamool from platform vendors and those visiting the station for grievance redressal seems to be not ‘enough’ for the corrupt ones in Chennai city police, as they have started looking for other avenues. 

Recently, three policemen were under scrutiny for their alleged involvement with a gang of bike thieves at MKB Nagar. Before that, some police officials were found to be involved in running a gambling centre at Nungambakkam. 

The present city Commissioner of Police S George recently wrote a letter to Home Secretary demanding an independent agency to probe into the alleged police-pan masala mafia connections. He had mentioned the involvement of some of his own colleagues who had siphoned off a major portion of the Rs 30 crore worth pan masala seized from Red Hills and Puzhal areas. 

The state police administration wing has a list of police personnel who are facing criminal charges in Chennai as well as Tamil Nadu police. The state intelligence wing called Special Branch CID, which apart from collecting daily status reports, also works as a counter intelligence agency and reports the corrupt ways of city police personnel to their parent department. 

“There is always a stand-off between the local police and SB-CID as we report their corrupt and criminal practices to their higher-ups,” an SB-CID official said. However, hardly any action is taken based on the reports due to the ‘connections’ of the police personnel involved. Some cases end just with departmental action, the official said. 

When policemen are involved in minor criminal activities, the immediate punishment will be to keep them at vacancy reserve and then transfer them to a different station. “Whenever such reports come to the notice of higher officials, departmental action will be initiated against the personnel involved. However, we prefer to handle these cases internally, without the news getting leaked,” a senior police official said. 

“Transfer as punishment hardly works. What we need is proper counselling and rehabilitation of these cops. In police, there is no scientific mechanism to handle the issue of criminalisation of the force,” another senior police official said.