Crime branch's plan of action to improve probe standard

BHUBANESWAR: The state Crime Branch has prepared a plan of action (POA) to improve the standard of investigation by police across the state. POA involves specific instructions for investigating officers (IOs) on the procedures that need to be followed during probe.
The Crime Branch has sent the POA to all district superintendents of police (SPs) and asked them to sensitise their IOs in police stations for effective implementation.TOI has a copy of the POA. “We have prepared an illustrative POA in which IOs have been advised to follow basic steps. We have specified the action plans like how to proceed in investigation, right evidence they should collect and samples they should send for examination among others. We have also set deadline for each step of investigation,” a senior police officer told TOI.
The Crime Branch said many IOs do not give importance to time-bound investigation. “We often observed that many IOs were unaware of the durability of CCTV footage, ranging between seven days to one month. At times, IOs responded very late and failed to get CCTV footage. It affected investigations. In the POA, we have specifically mentioned timeframe for each action or stage of investigation,” the officer said.
The Crime Branch expressed displeasure over the delay in release of supervision notes, issued by supervisory officers on the investigations by IOs, to the office of SPs. DSP-rank offices usually supervise the investigations by personnel in police stations and send the supervision note to SP offices and Crime Branch for vetting. “We noticed that the supervision notes usually reach SP offices and Crime Branch very late. By the time seniors guide IOs in investigations, it is too late. Fragile evidence like CCTV footage, nail clippings, blood stains, chance/latent fingerprints and other physical or digital evidence often get perished or decayed,” the Crime Branch’s letter to SPs read.
At the conference of senior police officers here recently, director general of police R P Sharma harped on the need to improve the standard of investigation. “Unless the IOs investigate properly, conviction rate will be low,” Sharma said. Recently, Sharma felicitated at least 30 IOs, whose good investigations led to convictions in some major cases.
“Our motive is to encourage officers to improve investigation and conviction rate. Crime Branch is constantly supervising and encouraging IOs to perform well,” additional director general (Crime Branch) Santosh Upadhyay said.