GUWAHATI: The Guwahati police have always claimed that they work overtime to solve registered cases but an important document known as the Case Diary, which is maintained by the investigating officer of the case, is not always true or genuine.
A retired IPS officer, talking to G Plus under condition of anonymity said, “The investigation officers (IOs) of registered cases, many a time, cook up the names of the witnesses registered in case diaries. The names of many such witnesses are fake.”
The officer revealed that the IOs are involved in all kinds of duties and do not get enough time to investigate cases assigned to them on an everyday basis. So they cook up stories and even “manufacture” the witnesses when the work on the case diary.
He revealed that when he was in service he managed to haul up many IOs for such mistakes and accordingly warned them. But the practice remains in Assam Police and especially in Guwahati.
Interestingly another police source from one of the police stations in Guwahati revealed that many IOs even hire civil unemployed youths to write the case diaries and these youths are paid for writing case diaries.
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A civilian writing case diaries get from Rs 500 to Rs 800 for writing one case diary.
Under the provision of Section 172 of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), every police officer conducting the investigation shall maintain a record of investigation done on each day in a Case Diary (CD) in the prescribed form. Case diaries are important records of the investigation carried out by an investigating officer. Any court may ask for the case diaries of a case under inquiry or trial and may use such diaries, not as evidence in the case, but to aid it in such inquiry or trial.
The CD, which is a record of day by day investigation of a case, shall contain details of the time at which the information reached the investigating officer, the time at which the investigation began and was closed, the place or places visited by the IO and a statement of the facts and circumstances ascertained through investigation.
Case diaries should contain only particulars of actual steps taken or progress made in the investigation and such details of investigation which have bearing on the case.
Addresses, both present and permanent of the witnesses and all other relevant details should be invariably recorded in the case diaries.
Ironically, the names of the witnesses and their addresses recorded in most of the case diaries are fake, revealed a source in the police.
