When police seem to be on a ‘cracking spree’ across the State, bringing the criminals to book in remarkably short spans of time, a critical refrain is running among the people that the cops are harassing the innocent people in their zeal to ‘crack’ crimes. They cited an instance that came into light in the State capital two days ago to buttress their point. Dehradun police brass was left red-faced after it came to the fore that some cops, tasked to crack a high-profile case, had harassed a local property dealer.
The people who are at receiving end of such cop high-handedness said under pressure from their seniors to crack a burglary case reported in the residence of a retired administrative officer (deputy director), police lau-nched a zealous overdrive, resulting in the innocent being drag-ged into the ‘achievement’ net.
However, with outcry being raised by the angry family members and neighbours, police backtracked and released the person who had been taken to the police station for questioning. They demonstrated at the police post in Patelnagar on Thursday night. SSP was forced to revert five policemen — Aman Chaddha, Dharam Singh, Naresh Bhandari, Surendra and Sunil — to police line after the allegation of innocents being hounded was found to have substance.
It was reported that dozens of unidentified persons had burgled the house of an administrative officer, located at Shimla Enclave, Majra, Patel Nagar area on Wednesday night. Inves-tigation revealed that the robbery had happened thanks to Ch-owkidar Sukhchain lowering guard. The members of family were out of station on the day the incident occurred, police said.
Police further said that to absolve himself of the blame, the Chowkidar kept on changing his statements while being grilled. While he earlier said that 10-11 members of Kachchha Baniyan gang had burgled the house and decamped with jewelleries worth lakhs of rupees he retraced from this statement a little later, saying that four locals had barged into the house and committed the robbery, police said.