Another instance of Noida's policing woes

NOIDA: If you are in trouble in Noida, do not waste time dialling 100 from your mobile phone.
The call will go to the Delhi Police control room where you will be told that it is a Noida case so nothing can be done. The problem, say senior police officers is that in the 10-odd years that mobile phones have been around, the city police did not even care to procure a GSM router that redirects calls to 100 to the city control room.They are still "in the process'' of doing so. Awareness levels about the alternate control room number 0120-2525100 are dismal.
There is more to the Noida's policing woes. The city needs more than 5,500 policemen. It has only 1,754, out of which at any given point, only 50% or less are on law and order duties. Thus every policeman in the city has to take care of 1,368 citizens. In Delhi the figure is 610 Delhiites to every policeman.
According to SP Noida (City) Ashok Tripathi, a proposal for 4027 additional cops was submitted in October, 2008. "At any given point, about 10 % of the staff is on leave, 25 % deployed for VIP duty, jail duty, morgue duty etc, 10-12 % are on administrative and clerical duties and another 5-10 % are on personal duty of officers. Isn't it inevitable that crime has been going up?'' says KK Gautam, former SP of Noida. Tripathi cites the dipping crime statistics to defend his force but that, say retired cops, is a deliberate ploy to hoodwink authorities.
"Evaluation of SHOs and SSPs happen on the basis of number of cases reported, not on cases worked out. So, to keep their record clean, cops often don't register FIRs. I myself witnessed a robbery on the road between Noida and Greater Noida where bikers threw all the family members out of the car and also molested a woman before escaping with the car. The chowki in-charge made the complainant give a complaint of car theft making him write that he had been travelling alone and had left the car with the engine on when the incident happened,'' said a retired police officer.
There is no mobile forensic lab in the city - little wonder that in cases like the one on Tuesday where a DU student was gangraped, proceedings are on hold till forensic reports come from far-off places like Agra and Lucknow. The force has no dog squad and just 16 PCR vans for the 203 square Km under its jurisdiction. There is not even an interrogation room in the entire city. The first crime against women police station near Sector 39 in a virtual non-starter.
On a fact finding mission on Thursday, the Times City team found most police posts deserted, indifferent constables whiling the afternoon hours away by sitting in the sun. "We have only dandas and no weapons. If there is serious trouble, we are scared for ourselves, who do we save,'' asked a constable. Some though think they are better off with their benign dandas. "What if we shoot someone by mistake, the politicians will eat us alive,'' said an ASI his statement a grim reminder of how politics is eating into policing in Noida.
Tripathi is quick to defend his force. "We have already spent Rs 2 crore to activate GSM on the emergency number (100). We are making progress. We work 24 hours non-stop. We have put in a proposal for better automatic weapons and other resources," He said.