Mumbai: In order to curb the city's crime rate, the Mumbai Police have started reviving their old tactics. This time they have rejuvenated their old scheme of adopting criminals in which individual criminals have been assigned to a single cop. This will help the police keep criminals in check and to detect cases more quickly. The scheme will also help them to fix responsibility in case the criminal continued with his activities. So far over 14,000 criminals have been adopted across the city.
Once a criminal is assigned to a cop, that cop will be responsible for his activities. The cop has to take all the criminals’ updates almost on a daily basis and in a fortnight submit a report to his superiors. According to the police, the policeman should be well aware of everything related to the particular criminal, including his daily routine, number of family members, source of income and so on. Updating his contact details and address if changed is a routine practice.
The practice of adopting criminals is underway since November and in two months 14,858 criminals have been adopted so far. "The motive of this scheme is crime prevention, if criminals know that they are being monitored, it would act as a deterrent to their future activities of any criminal nature," said Mumbai Police spokesperson, DCP S Chaitanya.
Last year, the city witnessed more number of offences as compared to that of a year ago. In 2019, total 41,931 offences registered in the city that figure rose to 51,068 a year later. The police attributed this rise to lock down as out of the total offences registered last year, 28,793 were of the violations in the lockdown period.
As part of the criminal adoption scheme, the Mumbai Police are also focusing on preventive action against the criminals. In order to reduce the menace of gangs in the eastern suburbs especially in Govandi-Mankhurd and Trombe areas, the Mumbai Police had slapped stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against the members of a couple of gangs in the areas.
The police have also started taking good behaviour bonds from the criminals based on their financial status, in some instances bonds amounting to Rs 20-25 have been taken.
