53% of complaints against police nixed

COIMBATORE: Police department and impartiality? Not many would attribute that quality to the men in khaki. Not even the latest report from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). In what could well be a wake-up call to the governments on the urgent need for police reforms, the latest report from the NCRB said that 53 per cent of the complaints lodged against cops last year were closed as “false/unsubstantiated”.Even international organisations are crying hoarse over the large scale human rights violations by the cops in India. But according to the NCRB report, the police received just 37 complaints last year from across the country on rights violations committed by its personnel. Interestingly, the police department in 19 states and all of the seven union territories has not recorded a single instance of rights violation committed by its own personnel. “The affected persons will get justice only if there is an independent body to investigate into the complaints against police personnel. One can just lodge a complaint against a cop to his superior officer. But in most cases, the department even refuses to record such complaints. Human rights commission is toothless in dealing with such complaints,” said Prof A Marx of the People’s Union for Human Rights.Creating an independent authority to deal with the complaints against cops was one of the main recommendations of the National Police Commission (1979-81). Many states, including TN, has refused to implement the recommendations.