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."