Gone are the days when robbers used to loot the area in the garb of the policemen. It’s just the opposite now. Robbers will be donning the Khakis to patrol the criminal-infested areas of Bareilly district and few would even become crime counselors for the police at the scene of crime.
This can be the changing face of police patrolling in the country. Call it reformative policing or just another innovative idea in the field of policing, but Bareilly is all geared up for this. Brainchild of UP’s firebrand IPS officer Anand Swarup, presently Senior Superintendent of Police, Bareilly, this experiment has given him tremendous results in terms of curbing crime and helping criminals of the past join the mainstream.
“I implemented this for the first time when I was SSP in Etah in 2004 and carried forward this legacy in Firozabad in 2005,” says Swarup, who has seen 31 transfers in his 12 year career and also holds the reputation of being an ‘encounter specialist’.
“We have already identified parts of Bareilly district, where this will be implemented. This helps petty criminals earning their livelihood through fairer means and even police can use the expertise of history-sheeters of the past to track the criminals,” he adds.
Swarup says, someone who has done crime in the past knows how the crime is committed. As police officers we can only guess and investigate, but they can actually guide you to the criminal. My idea was to use their expertise.
It was in 2004 in Etah, when Swarup first implemented this. He divided the area in a cluster of 50 shops each and assigned a criminal to patrol the area for eight hours and gave him a beat book. In return each shopkeeper had to pay Rs 50 a month, which amounted to Rs 2500 collectively, as monthly salary to the criminal. His work was reviewed jointly by the police and the employers (50 shop owners) on a monthly basis. This option of patrolling was not only given to criminals but to unemployed youth as well. For the first time when he called history-sheeters for a meeting, out of 500, only 100 turned up. Initial hesitation was there and Swarup too faced the ire of the senior bosses as his idea was termed as ‘maverick’ by them.
“It was a daring task as it could have had bad pitfalls and I was keeping faith on criminals. But one has to be innovative and I took the risk. In India, policing is all about catching criminals randomly in order to solve cases. But the conventional method of tracking the actual criminals from the crime scene is a passé. With the help of these crime counselors, we were able to solve cases easily and catch the real culprits,” he says.
Regarding the selection of criminals to do the right job, he says, “There are three types of criminals or HS (history-sheeters). The first is one who has a history of doing petty crimes (HS-A), second is one who commits petty crimes and is still active (HS-A*) and third habitual offenders who are into more serious crimes (HS-B). We selected people having no crime record for the past five years or more of HS-B category and having a likelihood of improvement and HS-A.”
It brought immediate results as the first experiment that took in Jalesar in Etah, saw theft cases stop in the first month itself. Incidents of house trespassing came down tremendously and crime chart dipped to a new low in comparison to the records of past five years.
Seeing the success rate, other clusters who were skeptical about the project also came forward to adopt the scheme. Regarding solving a case of crime, Swarup remembers that a former robber was instrumental in solving a case of a big robbery and looting in the area. “He gave us such vital clues that we busted an entirely new gang of young criminals having no past criminal record and who were in the job for quite sometime. Earlier, what used to happen was, police would round up other criminals with similar past crime records and arrest them for the crime committed. Cases of false implication were rampant. For these criminals too who were falsely implicated, more cases, irrespective whether they committed or not, meant enhancing their reputation and building fear factor among public.
“Thus newer gangs keep on committing crimes and live a life of anonymity and police doesn’t even know about it. Busting of newer gangs also acted as a deterrent for amateurs wanting to enter the world of crime. Also instances of a particular crime pattern stopped when newer gangs were busted.”
This also improved the relationship between past history-sheeters and the police as well as their village neighbours. They also acted as informers. Although, according to him, the system of mukhbir or informer is still prevalent in UP but they have become politicians and influential people in the society. They only keep in touch with the senior district police officials and don’t go to the thana, where they are supposed to share information. It is much of a status symbol than what it was actually meant to be – help police in nabbing criminals and continuous flow of information at the thana level.
These ‘reformed’ criminals were also given law and order duties. “In fact they participated in the Republic Day parade in Etah and took an oath never to commit a crime again,” adds Swarup.
Another factor that helped these criminals to join the mainstream was deleting their history sheets. According to the provisions in the law, once a history sheet is opened, it can only be deleted once a history-sheeter dies or he hasn’t committed a single crime in 30 years. But until the time they have history sheets, the criminals have to constantly go to the police stations for review. But there’s another provision in the law which states that if the SSP is convinced that an HS has reformed, his history-sheet can be deleted.
“I tore down the history-sheets of 14 in Etah and 30 in Firozabad in front of other history-sheeters. Being a history-sheeter has its own social implications in villages and there’s also a stigma attached to it. Seeing this, other history-sheeters too got inspired to join the mainstream,” he adds.
However, Swarup’s idea was put in the bin once he moved out of these districts as “it needs a tremendous amount of responsibility and nobody wants to risk his job”. A district posting anywhere in country is considered a plum posting and a small mistake can cost you the job and one can easily be shunted out to an insensitive post. So none dared to implement this.
As far as Bareilly is considered, Swarup is just two months old here. “Instances of crime are lesser than Etah and Firozabad. So I launched Project Didi first and now I am about to kick-start my pet project here,” Swarup adds. Pockets have been identified and scrutiny of the criminal records is going on. The out-of-the-box ‘meeting’ of history-sheeters and the police is just a step away.
Welcome to the world of criminal patrolling!
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