Mumbai: The Police Complaints Authorities (PCAs) was established by Maharashtra in 2014 to address the complaints by the public against the police, but they stay amiss in Mumbai. In an annual report published by the non-governmental organisation Praja Foundation, it was revealed that PCAs are yet to come into practice.
Problems involving allegations of serious misconduct, corruption and abuse of authority are some that were to be addressed by PCA, revealed the report. In Maharashtra, PCA is set up at several divisional levels like Nashik, Pune, Aurangabad, Nagpur, Amravati and Konkan. However, only Pune and Nashik PCAs have been established as of now.
An official said that PCAs are meant to function as a strong accountable bodies over the police, who can push them to fulfil their role. While the state PCA accepts complaints against officers of higher rank like deputy superintendent, assistant commissioner of police and above, complaints for the rank of senior police inspector and below are to be made to the divisional PCAs. Which implies that if Mumbaikars are unhappy with the police force, they have no platform to complain.
An RTI filed regarding the minutes of the meeting held by the Home Ministry of the State Government from 2018-19 regarding PCA, it shows that during one such discussion, it was revealed that land for Konkan division of PCA office was finalised, however, there was no deadline or mention of when the divisional PCA office would be set up. The report states, since the divisional PCAs are not set up, there exists a serious gap in the accountability mechanism of police department. Moreover, there is no proper grievance mechanism for complaints against police.
Once the complaint is filed with the PCA, they will examine the complaint and within seven days, a designated officer of the PCA will place the complaint before the board. If the complaint seems faulty, they could reject your complaint, but must give you the reasons in writing, within 15 days of filing the complaint. The PCA then appoints its own investigating officer to conduct the inquiry, or it can ask another investigating agency or officer to do it, submitting a report to the PCA latest within 60 days.
