Mumbai : The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), at the end of this year’s first quarter, has registered 25 per cent more cases than it did in the same period last year, with a major chunk of the cases coming from remote areas of Maharashtra. However, they are lagging behind during trials due to the shortage of staff at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Kalina where voice recordings of all traps go for authentication.
In 2014, until March 28, the number of traps carried out by the ACB was 256 and the number of accused persons booked was 352. This year, the number of traps until the same date is 319 and the number of accused persons booked is 413. There is a 25 per cent increase in the number of traps. While the highest number of traps has come from Pune at 59, the Aurangabad range stands second at 51 and Nagpur and Thane at the third place with 48 traps each. Both Nagpur and Aurangabad cover remote areas such as Chandrapur, Beed, Jalna, Gadhchiroli and Gondia.
The Director General of ACB, Praveen Dixit, feels that this has been made possible because of the constant awareness drives that the ACB is undertaking in these areas.
“We have a better response from rural areas considering their remoteness; even our web application has received more complaints from these areas. Our officers have been continuously undertaking awareness drives in colleges where they are teaching youngsters how to submit a complaint with the ACB if they come across a corrupt government official. We believe this has helped us a lot in making people more aware and alert,” Dixit said.
While the number of traps is increasing with every passing day, their trials in court are lagging behind due to the few number of staff at the Forensic Science Laboratory who are not able to keep up with the number of voice samples that are coming in.
The authentication of voice recordings, which are recorded during a trap, is an important piece of evidence in court to prove that the voice of the accused is genuine and not fabricated.
“We had taken up this issue with the Forensic Science Laboratory and they had sent a proposal to the government quite a while ago to increase their staff. We are expecting the proposal to get accepted in the next month or two. The situation should improve then, hopefully,” Dixit said.
The ACB currently has 3,289 cases pending for trial in various special ACB courts.
Sindhu J Mansukhani
