Is Police Commissionerate, Guwahati a right response?

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, March 8: A type of policing that can yield results continues to elude fast-growing Guwahati city where the first year of police commissionerate has proved to be a damp squib.

In order to keep pace with rising population in the city and as such the rising crime graph, the City Police Commissionerate was a made reality from January 1, 2015. Over a year has elapsed, but the crime graph keeps rising in the city. Thus a question that knocks everybody’s mind is: Is the formation of the City Police Commissionerate the right response to the ground situation in Guwahati? It is something for those at the helm of affairs to wreck their brains.

A year-wise cases registered in various police stations in the city from 2006 to 2015 is enough to make one understand ‘who has beaten whom’ in the age-old ‘chor police ka khel’. However, in the statistics shown here as obtained from none other than the police department, one has no way out but to rely on the saying ‘numbers never lie’.

In 2006, the number of cases registered in different police stations in the city was 5,896. The number of cases, however, kept rising in the subsequent years – to 6337 in 2007, 7444 in 2008, 7254 in 2009, 9371 in 2010, 10,946 in 2011, 11490 in 2012, 12677 in 2013, 13121 in 2014 and 13274 in 2015.

The month-wise registration of number of cases in the city in 2015 also has much to say on the way of functioning of the City Police Commissionerate. The number of cases registered in various police stations in the city in January is 943, that kept on rising to 1086 in February, 1143 in March, fell to 1062 in April only to rise to 1095 in May, 1057 in June, 1270 in July, 1125 in August, 1153 in September, 1176 in October, 1102 in November and 1056 in December.

The figures cited above have made it clear that the type of policing currently in place in the city has failed to check the rising number of crimes in the city.