Criminal activities by cops on rise in the city

Extortion and other criminal activities by a section of policemen have increased in the capital city due to lack of stringent measures of the authorities concerned in this regard.

Many policemen have long been engaged in doing various criminal activities including extortion and bribery as no stern action is taken against them, according to court records.

There are very few instances of awarding exemplary punishment to the policemen involved in criminal activities under the existing law, the court records say.

A number of police officials including officer-in-charges of different police stations have been sued on charge of extortion, bribery and other criminal activities in the last six months.

But all the cases have been filed with Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Court as the police stations concerned declined to register them and even they did not take any steps to probe the allegations.

On April 5, a case was filed against officer-in-charge (OC) of Rampura Police Station along with its two sub-inspectors (SI) with a Dhaka court on charge of extortion.

On May 25, a Dhaka court issued warrant for arrest of two policemen of Mirpur Police Station on charge of extorting Tk 10,000 and snatching a mobile phone from a resident of Mirpur on March 20.

A case was filed against the two policemen with the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court of Dhaka On March 27.

On May 30, a housewife filed a case with Dhaka court against six people including officer-in-charge of Motijheel Police Station and two of his colleagues for issuing threat to kill her husband in crossfire.

On June 27, a fraudulent and embezzlement case was filed against two policemen including Sutrapur office-in-charge Md Nazrul Islam.

Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) earlier filed a case against a sub-inspector (SI) of Mirpur Police Station on charge of taking bribe from the complainant of a case.

A section of policemen in the name of security search has long been engaged in collecting illegal toll from people in different areas of the capital city.

Some SIs with the help of constables frisk people — drivers and passengers of rickshaws, taxi-cabs and CNG-run auto-rickshaws — from early morning until midnight.

In most cases, they stop these vehicles on various pleas, search them and pick up the passengers with a threat to take them into custody.

Over 50,000 policemen faced departmental action for neglect of duty and involvement in criminal activities in the last few years, police headquarter sources said.

But the number of policemen sacked for their wrongdoings is very few, the sources said.

Police Internal Oversight (PIO), an intelligence wing of the police formed to oversee the activities of the cops, remain almost inactive as the government has recently denied giving approval to the proposed organogram of the wing.

The PIO started working with 286 policemen. Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) was given charge of the PFI in the proposed PFI organogram. As per the proposed organogram, SPs were given charge of the districts.

The initiative to form an intelligence body to oversee the activities of policemen was first taken in 1989.

“None would be spared from top to bottom in the police department if found indulging in corruption, Inspector General of Police (IGP) Hassan Mahmood Khandker said."

"We took some measures to stop corruption by policemen through motivation as well as punishment to those involved in criminal activities," the police chief said.

"We first tried to motivate the policemen not to involve themselves in corruption," the IGP said adding, "The corrupt policemen who could not correct themselves would face exemplary punishment".

Former IGP Mohammad Hadis Uddin stressed the need for appointing an ombudsman in the police department to investigate crimes committed by the policemen.

He also said, “there is a law in the police department has its but we need to properly apply those laws to stop crimes by cops.”

“If you look at the police department statistics, every year police department took action against around 5,000 cops,” he added.

The Ex IGP also said "We should first make sure that there is accountability and transparency in the police department by giving punishment to the cops involved in crimes."

Posted in: Police