Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot says he is writing to Union home minister Amit Shah to make registration of FIR on every complaint received compulsory across India. Gehlot wants to ensure that states which register more complaints are not labelled as the ones with worse crime rates just because they have been transparent. The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data for 2019 suggests a massive spike in crime in Rajasthan, giving the opposition BJP a handle to take pot shots at Gehlot. “I too could have refused FIRs to keep crime figures low as was being done in the past but I am building the people’s faith in the police,” says the CM.

On June 1, 2019, Gehlot had directed the state police to register FIRs on every complaint with the assurance that no cop would be held guilty on the grounds of higher number of FIRs. IPC cases jumped 31 per cent from 171,889 in 2018 to 225,306 in 2019, and the crime rate went from 224 to 290 per lakh population as the state jumped to 5th position from 9th in the worst affected states. The number of rape FIRs, often suppressed unlike murder, rose dramatically from 4,335 in 2018 to 5,997 (at a crime rate of 15.9 per lakh population), topping the charts in both numbers and rate among the states.

Incidentally, October 6, 2020, was a significant date in this regard as the special SC/ST court sentenced four rapists to life in the brutal Alwar Thanagazi block gang rape case from 2019. It was also an eye-opener for Gehlot on how investigations are to be handled. Judge Brajesh Kumar Sharma gave his verdict after 17 months but it also showed the police department’s response in a poor light. An FIR was filed only after a purported video of the gang-rape began circulating on social media.

The victim has since been appointed as a police constable by the Gehlot government. But more than that, Gehlot, shocked by the indifference of the cops, took a series of drastic measures. Now, not only are FIRs mandatory, one can be lodged against the SHO too if he/ she fails to act; also every SP office can register an FIR if the complainant feels the local thana is not responsive enough.

Like many other states, Rajasthan too has been notorious for avoiding the lodging of FIRs to keep crime numbers down. ”The way the police deal with complainants who approach the station to lodge an FIR is pathetic. People are scared to enter the police stationwe must change this,” the CM told indiatoday.in on October 6, explaining how the first major step to deal with this is to make the station more people-friendly. Welcome desks will be set up in one-third of the police stations in a year.

As for rape incident numbers, when one looks at corresponding figures for SC victims, the crime rate at 4.5 per cent is second to Kerala but the number of FIRs at 554, is highest among the states. But Rajasthan also has 22 per cent scheduled caste population, which means that going by the overall number of rape FIRs, the figure for the SC community should have been about 1,200. So either there are fewer SC victims than the general population, which is a good sign, or all such cases are not being reported.

“The number of cases registered have increased, not the crime per se,” says M.L. Lather, D-G, crime, Rajasthan. He says the SPs have got 198 FIRs registered since June 1, 2019, when Gehlot made this provision of lodging FIRs at their office. The government found that 18 SHOs had refused to lodge FIRs and have chargesheeted 16 of them so far. Also, eight Heinous Crime Investigating Units (HIUs) have been set up, seven of which work under a DSP in each police range while the eighth at the headquarters in Jaipur monitors progress in the investigations and trials. Every district now also has a DSP heading special investigating unit (SIU) for crimes against women which has resulted in a dramatic reduction in investigation time, from 278 days in 2017-18 to 113 days in 2019 and 2020 with most cases disposed off within one to three months.

Rajasthan has been so notorious in the FIR issue that almost one-fourth had to be registered through the courts under Section 156 (3) of Cr Pc. How Gehlot’s initiative has worked is apparent from the figures for rape cases. In 2018, 30.5 per cent of FIRs had to be lodged through the courts. This came down to 18.6 per cent in 2019 and 13.4 per cent so far in 2020 with the police registering more than 87 per cent rape cases.

At times, senior cops tell Gehlot that many of the complaints are false and so should not be lodged as FIRs. But the CM has a different approach to it. “The police must lodge an FIR, investigate the case fast and objectively and recommend closure before the court if the FIR is false,” he says.

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