New Delhi, Delhi High Court today asked the Centre to give an “overall and integrated” timeline of steps it proposes to take to improve policing and reduce crime, particularly against women, children and the elderly in the national capital.
A bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva issued the direction after perusing a letter from the Centre which stated that inducting more personnel in Delhi police is a “continuous process” and was “likely to take some time”.
The bench said the letter cannot leave the issue of increasing the number of cops as “open-ended and vague” and added “the bottomline is that you have to spend money on security of people”.
It also suggested Centre to have a large pool of officers containing a special section entirely for VIP duty.
“You should have a time schedule. Give a concrete timeline,” the bench said and asked Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Sanjay Jain to file an affidavit “demonstrating an overall and intergrated timeline of proposed steps to improve policing and reduce incidents of crime, particularly against women, children and elderly”.
The court said the affidavit should also contain a specific plan with regard to use of technology to improve investigation mechanism.
“This would be in sync with the separation of crime investigation from law and order,” it added.
Referring to the letter, the ASG told the court that currently the police to population ratio was 244 and it would come down to 230 after they induct 4227 more cops which has been approved by the Ministry of Finance.
He said the benchmark for police to population in urban areas was 227.
The court asked Delhi police to give “statistics with regard to number of cases which are decided by the sessions court, the High Court and Supreme Court in the last five years”.
