States not quick enough to abide by Supreme Court's order to act against official apathy

DNA‎‎: Mumbai: Monday, October 10, 2016.

The Supreme Court (SC) has directed the states to act on officials, because of whom accused were acquitted, but the state seems to be moving slowly on it. After State Information Commission's (SIC) directive to the city police to share all such details by September 30, not all information has been provided.

dna in its September 23 edition had reported about SIC directing city police to provide details of committees that are formed and have discussed the cases, information on the meetings along with their minutes and the cases considered by the committee after dna filed an RTI application.

As per a more elaborate information provided after SIC order, there are more than one committees for the city. The earlier response seemed to have restricted the committee to one. These are spread across different branches of the city police. They include detection, enforcement, economic offences, and ports as per the more recent information provided by the police till date.

The Home Department General Resolution (GR) of October 2015, which also came into effect after an SIC order, had stated that the police should have a meeting once every three months to look at the cases. However, as per the information provided, in some cases, there was no meeting until the SIC order of September 19, 2016 was passed.

The detection department provided for details of one meeting. Minutes of meeting were not provided in any of the cases. In case of economic offences branch of the city police, the first meeting took place in May. There were no details of other meetings held. In case of enforcement, only the names of committee members were provided. No meeting was held till September 29, the date of reply. Port section of the police had its first meeting on September 26, 2016 after the SIC order.

"This shows that the government starts moving only after people ask details under RTI. Committees have been formed and we started to get info only due to RTI. Had RTI not been around, we wouldn't have got any information on the issue at all. Also, only giving details does not take into consideration the SC order. They have to take cases as per SC directions. Accountability of investigation officer should be decided as per the SC order. More and more people should question government under the RTI and that will lead to better accountability," said Bhaskar Prabhu whose RTI application had first lead to SIC order based on which home department issued a GR.

The SC in 2014, 'crestfallen, heartbroken and sorrowful', had directed all state governments to formulate a procedure for taking action against all erring investigating / prosecuting officials / officers when a murder of a minor had led to accused being acquitted by it. The SC, in its judgement said, "All such erring officials / officers identified, as responsible for failure of a prosecution case, on account of sheer negligence or because of culpable lapses must suffer department action. The above mechanism formulated would infuse seriousness in the performance of investigating and prosecuting duties, and would ensure that investigation and prosecution is purposeful and decisive." It also stated that a lesson should be learnt for future cases.