Monday, June 26, 2017

Hit-and-run: 12% convictions in 5 years

Times of India: Chandigarh: Monday, June 26, 2017.
At a mere 12% in the last 5 years, the city has very poor conviction rate in hit and run cases. This was revealed through an RTI query filed by a road activist.
The RTI reply revealed that only 137 accused were convicted between January 2012 and September 30, 2016, in hit and run cases. A total of 1,138 cases were registered in the city till 2016 and 342 hit and run incidents had proved fatal.
According to road activist Harman Sidhu, he had filed the RTI query seeking information regarding convictions in hit and run cases from 2012 to September 2016. "The facts are very discouraging. Only around 12% offending drivers got convicted in hit and run cases. The low numbers encourage the offenders to flee from the accident spots. The police investigate hit and run cases in a very casual manner and file untraced report in court in most of the cases."
According to the RTI reply , Sector 19 cops registered 78 hit and run cases between January 2012 to September 2016 but was able to trace 63 cases and 29 drivers were convicted by the court. As many as 71cases were registered in Sector 26 police station and 43 erring drivers were traced but only 6 were convicted.
The Mani Majra police re gistered 72 cases of hit and run and was able to trace 37, but only 3 were convicted while Industrial Area (phase -I) police registered 23 such cases and no one was convicted in any case.
Maximum 203 hit and run cases were registered at Sector 34 police station and the cops traced 169 drivers. However, 27 people got convicted between January 2012 and September 2016. As many as 195 cases were registered at Sector 39 police station and the cops traced 168 cases. Only 20 drivers were convicted by the court.
At Sector 36, 172 hit and run cases were reported and 133 were traced. Of these 19 offending drivers were convicted by the court. In Sector 11 police station, 161cases were filed and 130 were traced but only 21convicted.
Senior lawyer at the district courts Navdeep Arora said the main reason behind less conviction rate in hit and run cases was lack of evidence and in several cases witnesses turn hostile. Other reason for the same was the complainant and the accused reaching an out of court settlement, he added.Arora said non-functioning CCTV cameras was also a major reason behind the less conviction. "Generally , hit and run cases are reported during night hours and teh city doesn't have night vision cameras that can capture numbers plate of erring vehicles."
DSP (traffic) Yashpal Vinayak said, "The police tries to solve every cases but due to lack of evidence many cases go untraced resulting in low conviction rate. The police department has a proposal to install around 600 cameras in the city. Once the cameras are installed, such cases will not go untraced."