Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

Instil sense of security, Jayalalithaa tells police

By Our Special Correspondent

Chennai Jan. 9. The Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, today reiterated her call to the police to "rethink and reinvent" their image as a sensitive, caring force.

"It is not enough if the police acts to solve crimes, he or she must address the problem of fear of crime itself", Ms. Jayalalithaa said.

The Chief Minister was inaugurating a national seminar on "Crime Prevention Management - A multipronged approach," at the Secretariat here and launching a web site of the Tamil Nadu Police Training College (tnpa.tn.gov.in).

The primary objective of the police should be to effectively prevent and control crime and instil a sense of security in the citizens. Calling upon the police to formulate a "pro-active" approach, she emphasised the need for community support. "During the implementation of the crime prevention strategy, the public should be associated at both the planning and implementation stages."

`Beat criminals at their own game'

Pointing out that crime prevention and detection had become more difficult and complex with a "sea change in the pattern and intensity of crimes", Ms. Jayalalithaa said the challenge was now in evolving new strategies to curb and crack on more sophisticated forms of criminality. "The beat and the baton, the whistle and the fingerprint powder may no longer be enough to stop the criminal who communicates by cellphone, breaks and enters by hacking a computer and molests through chatroom". Science must be harnessed to beat the criminals at their own game. "Our law enforcers have necessarily to keep abreast of the latest technologies," she said.

Geographical Information System-based applications need to be developed for highlighting crime patterns and to evolve appropriate strategies to combat crime. "We have to break free of conventional investigation formats to deal with hi-tech crime".

Justice Jayachandra Reddy, Press Council of India chairman, said the deficiencies in the criminal justice system should be rectified to make it more effective. There was a view that very little had been done to improve the system after the 1973 amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code. He suggested the setting up of an exclusive Directorate of Prosecution and a separate investigating wing of the police.

Call to media

Mr. Justice Reddy asked the media to refrain from holding a parallel trial in a case pending before courts.

"Newspapers cannot assume the role of an investigator in a pending case as any such attempt will tend to influence the mind of the court on the merits of the case.

" The liberty of the Press was important, but it could not go to the extent of subverting the course of justice and could not usurp the functions of the court.

State Ministers, the Chief Secretary, Lakshmi Pranesh, senior police officers including the DGP, R. Rajagopalan, and the DGP (Training), S. Ganapathy, participated.

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