Voicing concern over the "communication gap" between police and jail authorities across India on nabbing proclaimed offenders, a Delhi court has suggested that the Centre set up a "centralised data bank" which can prevent such offenders from evading action.
Metropolitan Magistrate Naresh Laka advocated forming a centralised data bank where information of all proclaimed offenders (POs) can be fed and it can be checked whether an arrested person has earlier been declared a PO by any other court in any part of the country.
Stating that there was lack of connectivity between probe agencies and jail authorities across the country over apprehending POs, the court asked Delhi Police Commissioner and Ministry of Home Affairs to make system more effective in this regard.
The exercise of proclamation of POs, it said, can be more effective if the publication are made on the internet on the website of Delhi Police, District Courts, Prison Department.
The magistrate passed the order in a case where the accused was found to have been declared a PO before his arrest in another case.
The accused was wanted in a case of 2001 when a headless body of one Raghubir Singh was found in Rajouri Garden but no clue of the culprit was found. In February 2010, one Govind was arrested in another case and disclosed having killed Singh nine years ago.
Govind escaped from custody and was declared proclaimed offender. When the court directed police to ascertain if he has been arrested in any other state, it was told that their is no connectivity between police and jail authorities across India.
"It is a common phenomenon that lakhs of criminals abscond every year during probe or trial of cases. Consequently, they are declared PO," the court said.
Referring to a news report, it said "there are 13,000 POs in Delhi alone. In my personal opinion, the data of all POs is not up-to-date on account of various administrative reasons and communication gap between courts and the police station."
"Such information can be sent to computer system of all police stations in such a manner that whenever any person is arrested and when his particulars are entered in the system, the system can alert whether he has been declared a PO in any other case," it said.
