Burdened with disturbances since November '19, pending cases mount in Delhi Police
New Delhi: Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, while the Delhi Police has to fight the battle of protecting its own from the contagious disease, it has another task at hand — that of clearing the massive backlog of cases that have accumulated over the years. Latest data compiled by the city police shows that more than 1 lakh cases are pending with the Delhi Police.
According to Delhi Police sources, at the start of the year, there were around 91,307 pending investigation (PI) cases and 1,05,212 cases were added up to March 15. "From January 1 to March 15, about 51,764 cases were disposed of and since COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown as many as 29,565 cases were disposed of," the data shows. According to the data, 1,17,841 cases were pending with city police as of May 27.
Sources further revealed that 7,228 cases of kidnapping, 12,683 cases of cheating and forgery, 1,395 hurt cases, 36,805 theft, burglary cases were among some of the pending cases. They added that there were over 14,000 cases which were pending for over a year whereas more than 7,000cases were pending for more than two years and over 3,000 cases pending for investigation for over five years.
Sources said that the Delhi Police Commissioner has reviewed pending investigation cases, disposal and inquest proceedings.
Sources with knowledge of the matter added that over 4,700 cases pending investigation for over one year, more than 1,400 PI cases for over two years and 303 cases pending investigation for more than five years were disposed of in 2020.
Significantly, the Delhi Police has been busy since November last year. Starting from the Tis Hazari clash in November to the anti-CAA protests in December, the last two months of 2019 kept the city police on its toes. And starting from January this year, there have been continuous incidents of attacks starting from the JNU attacks to multiple incidents of a serious disturbance at protest sites across the Capital.
In February, the police were busy with the Delhi elections and with US President Donald Trump's visit scheduled later in the month, the Capital saw one of its deadliest riots in North East Delhi. And since March, city cops have been busy enforcing the COVID-19 lockdown.
