Complaints against serious misconduct by Assam Police

2020 REPORT PAINTS A SORRY IMAGE

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: People lodged 32 complaints against non-registration of FIRs (first information reports) and 13 against blackmailing or extortion by police, in the State Police Accountability Commission (SPAC), Assam in 2020. This statistics is according to SPAC's annual report for 2020 published recently.

These 45 complaints (32+13) against the police come under the 'serious misconduct' category that includes death in police custody, grievous injury, molestation, rape, attempt to rape, arrest or detention without following the due process of the law, forceful deprivation from the rightful ownership of property, blackmailing or extortion etc. The State Government formed the State Police Accountability Commission under the Assam Police Act, 2007, to enable the public to lodge complaints against police personnel. The SPAC categorizes charges as 'serious misconduct' and 'misconduct'.

According to the SPAC report, people lodged 230 complaints against the police in 2020 – 55 tagged as serious misconduct and the remaining 175 as misconduct. The charges in the 55 complaints are custodial deaths (2); grievous hurt (1); molestation, rape and attempt to commit rape (2); arrest or detention without the due process of law (3), forceful deprivation from the rightful ownership of property (2), blackmailing or extortion (13) and non-registration of FIRs (32).

The charges in the remaining 175 cases against misconduct are police inaction, negligence and delay in the investigation (87); harassment, atrocities, misbehaviour and threatening (34); misuse of power (20); perfunctory investigation (24) and miscellaneous (10).

The SPAC recommended to the government to do away with the practice of junior police officers investigating complaints against senior police officers. It wants that the investigating officer of such complaints should be a rank senior to the accused police officer. Justice BP Katakey, who heads the SPAC as the chairman, was a former judge of the Gauhati High Court.

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