Kochi: In a shocking reminder of the deep-rooted corruption in the police department, investigators have come across several instances of police officials diverting fines collected from petty offenders to their personal bank accounts.
The probe was ordered following a significant dip in the amount of penalties remitted at honorary magistrate courts in Ernakulam,of late. The courts in the district used to receive around Rs 2 lakh as fines for petty offenses, but the collection has dropped to around Rs 10,000 in recent months.
The Ernakulam honorary special judicial magistrate court, which ordered the probe, has received vital evidence of amounts collected as fine being transferred to the personal bank accounts of a number of cops attached to different police stations in the district.
Based on a report by the honorary magistrate, a high-level police team has launched an investigation into the allegations.
Untraceable?
Normally, if the offender fails to remit the fine, a warrant will be issued against him/her. In most cases, the local police would return the warrant claiming that the addressee was ‘untraceable’.
When such petty cases get piled up in courts, they will be dismissed en masse. It is alleged that the police officers who is assigned to serve the warrant make use of the situation by taking bribe from the offender to help him/her to escape from law.
The court has received firm evidence of a police official forcing a person from Alappuzha, who was penalized Rs 200 for smoking at a public place, to transfer Rs 600 to the former’s personal bank account. It was also found out that the accused officer had sent the photograph of his check leaf to the offender through WhatsApp to give him the details of his account number and the bank code.
The court sent a report to police chiefs seeking a statewide investigation into the matter after the probe conducted in Kochi pointed towards several similar instances of fraud.
The initial probe revealed that the police officers tasked with handing over the warrant to the offender take money from him/ her before returning the warrant to the court claiming that the addressee was ‘untraceable’.
Courts grew suspicious over the surge in the number of ‘untraceable reports’ of late, which eventually lead to the inquiry.
Before ordering the probe, the court had traced, on its own, the parties who were served warrants and recorded their statements to unearth the fraud.