Goondas Act proves ‘costly’ for city police

The Inspector of each police station is responsible to prepare a detailed history of each of the accused detained under Goondas Act with all information about his past cases, conviction and other crime background. Of the ten such copies printed, five of them will be submitted to the Secretariat and one each to the prison department, CoP office, the Madras High Court, the police station concerned and the accused.

As each book runs to at least 600 pages, the Inspector is made to spend around Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000 for each accused to print his or her background. Since approximately 2,000 rowdy elements are detained under Goondas Act every year in the city, roughly Rs 2.40 crore is spent on these books alone. 

Inspectors are annoyed not just because of the number of books that they have to submit, but also because they do not get the amount spent for the exercise fully reimbursed. “It takes minimum three months to get the amount reimbursed, though partially, say Rs 8,000. The remaining amount will be from our pocket,” an Inspector of the city police, seeking anonymity, told DTNext.

Also, the libraries in the Secretariat departments, prisons, High Court, commissioner’s office and police stations are struggling to find space to accommodate these books.

When contacted, Commissioner of Police Karan Singha said that such dues were cleared without delay to the best of his knowledge. “None of my officers have raised such a complaint. If there is any, we will definitely look into it,” the CoP assured. 

“This has been a practice followed since 1982. If we convert them into digital record, it can save both space and money,” Superintendent of Police S Jayakumar said.