DMP to punish cops for harassment
Decides to act against illegal arrest
Courtesy Daily Star 24/10/07
Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) is going to introduce a mechanism to punish policemen for any illegal arrest and allow the victims to lodge complaints about any such harassment.
Under the new mechanism, the policemen concerned, the officer in-charge and the supervising officer will face punitive actions if any illegal arrest is made.
The step comes as a tough action to check harassment of innocent people by policemen through wrongful arrest and confinement.
To ensure accountability of their subordinate officers, DMP deputy commissioners (DC), additional DCs and assistant commissioners (ACs) will monitor all cases and arrests.
The victims of police harassment from now on will be able to lodge complaints to the commissioner, additional commissioner, DCs or OCs against the policemen responsible.
"If any illegal arrest is made the supervising officer, OC and the police officer concerned will face tough departmental action," DMP Commissioner Naim Ahmed told The Daily Star on Monday.
The DMP authorities have already identified 10 means corrupt police personnel have been using to harass people over the years. These include making illegal arrest, issuing threat of arrest, detaining wrongfully and releasing later in exchange for money, unnecessarily taking into police remand for illegal purpose, forcing people to provide money by issuing unnecessary inquiry slip, misusing court petitions to compel people to bribe the police, implicating people in false cases, taking bribe from complainants and misusing section 54 of Criminal Procedure Code and DMP Ordinance.
The authorities have found that usually the policemen posted in police stations harass people for illegal gains. Lack of efficiency is another cause behind the practice, it was found.
Apart from the punitive actions, the DMP is going to organise a workshop titled "Addressing harassment" in the first week of the next month for motivating the police officials not to harass people. Through several sessions, 23,500 uniformed and 804 civilian force members will be given the motivational training.
"The process has already been started. We are going to organise motivational workshops alongside taking punitive action to give the process a complete shape," DMP Commissioner Naim Ahmed said talking about the steps taken for stopping harassment of people by policemen.
The efforts are to establish individual accountability, he said adding that the organisation will not take the responsibility for offences committed by a few of its members.
To clean up the police department, the police high-ups have appointed around 1,000 policemen across the country as counter intelligence against the force in May. Following the report of the unit named "PIO (police intelligence oversight)," over 6,000 policemen have already been punished for different terms.
Detective Branch (DB) of police in the past one month has taken punitive actions against 52 officials and constables following allegations of corruption against them.
"A police constable on sanitary duty at a police station was not spared for taking Tk 15 only from a relative of a detainee," a top official wishing not to be quoted said.
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