String of daylight murders in Chennai stretches already struggling police

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Swathi was murdered at 6.40 am but police got to know of it after 8.30 am. “Neither top railway police officers nor the city commissioner of police bothered to visit the spot. Her body lay on the platform for almost two hours, with flies swarming around it,” said a relative of Swathi.

Railway ADGP Lakshmi Prasad, who was monitoring the probe before it was handed over to the city police, conceded she didn’t visit the spot but said she had sent an inspector general of police. Commissioner of Police T K Rajendran did not reply to questions on his alleged absence.

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Amid the family’s allegations of callousness, police officers point to huge vacancies. Vyasarpadi police station, for example, which has seen the highest number of murders, has only 32 officers against a sanctioned 60 to 80.

Statewide, the police are short by a sixth of their sanctioned strength, over 20,000 vacancies in various ranks against the sanctioned strength of over 1.21 lakh. There are some 3,600 vacancies in the rank of sub-inspectors alone. No city suffers the impact as much as Chennai, which accounts for some 100 police stations out of a total 1,000.

Police are not entitled to holidays or even a weekly off. “We get a day to relax after working for two or three weeks,” said an inspector in Chennai. “The number of duties we have wouldn’t allow us to skip a day even if we are sick. Many of us go to duty with tablets to keep us healthy and awake.”

Since January 2016, around 580 people have been arrested under the Goonda Act in Chennai city alone. Following Swathi’s death Friday, police have invoked the Act to arrest over 350 people from various parts of the city. But the Act allows police to hold habitual offenders and criminals for a maximum of one year.

Between 2001 and 2010, Chennai had seen 20 encounter killings, mostly of habitual offenders. This had triggered protests from civil society groups, some of which had gone to court. The last such encounter was in February 2012.

“Lack of officers and resources affects the cases we probe. The conviction rate is going down while the criminals we arrest either resume crime when out on bail or continue to orchestrate murders from inside prison,” said a senior officer. “It is plain truth that the reformation rate is nearly zero in prisons and prisons are instead working as a breeding ground for criminals.”

He added that in the case of Sridhar Dhanapalan, a don accused in several murder cases, police have done nothing to extradite him although he continues to operate from Dubai. Speaking to The Indian Express last January, Dhanapalan had claimed that it was corrupt police officers of Kancheepuram who had made him a criminal in the first place by foisting false cases on him.

An officer gave the example of an inmate of Vellore Central Prison, now an accused in the killing of T Ravikumar. He said police have not been able to submit crucial evidence against the same accused in the case of the murder of BSP leader A Thennarasu in 2015 — as it would reveal that he was still active behind bars.

“If we submit his call data records in the court with the location the Vellore prison, the court would ask us how prison inmates were using cellphones and executing murders. We have just added him as an accused and the case is pending before the court now,” said the officer.

A senior officer of the rank of ADGP denied police hands were tied when it came to innovative efforts, saying that since J Jayalalithaa came to power in 2011, she had encouraged such measures. On Friday, Madurai COP Shailesh Kumar Yadav launched a mobile app for public to reach police during emergencies.

Successful ‘Hello Police’ services in Ramnad and Virudhunagar districts help police ensure a friendly and accessible information system.

A senior government secretary in the home department said the Jayalalithaa government had also given powers in 2011 to DGPs to directly recruit police constables. “This was to make the recruitment process easier. But not many state DGPs except a few like K Ramanujam have used it effectively,” the secretary said.