Empowering field cops help crack crimes better: Prakasam SP Siddarth Kaushal

ONGOLE: The novel initiative of Prakasam Superintendent of Police (SP) Siddarth Kaushal to appoint head constables and assistant sub-inspectors (ASIs) as Junior Investigation Officers (JIO) to probe into the serious offences is yielding wonderful results. Kaushal is the first SP in the country to empower the field level cops with investigation responsibilities to crack the mysteries behind the crimes.
Besides making head constables and ASIs as JIOs, SP had appointed DSPs and Circle Inspectors as level-I and level-II mentors to closely monitor the investigation taken up by the field level cops helping them successfully complete the investigation.
Upon learning about the innovative move, Additional DGP (training) N Sanjay had showered praises on SP Siddarth Kaushal for keeping the field level cops motivated. “Involvement of first-level cops is crucial in the investigation process. By making them investigate the cases on their own right from registration of FIRs to filing of chargesheet is really a breakthrough initiative of Kaushal,” said Sanjay.
Kaushal took up evaluation of JIOs performance with mentors and JIOs on Saturday. The SP interacted with 62 JIOs from Ongole One Town, Ongole taluka PS at the district police office and inquired how many cases have they registered so far, how many cases are in PT and how many cases are pending. Similarly, Kaushal himself explained the merits and demerits in each case file and gave an in-writing procedure to be followed in completing the investigation. After the evaluation, The SP along with 62 JIOs reached the crime scene near the Raavi tree in Rajiv Nagar and directly gave his advice and suggestions as to how to collect the evidence at the crime scene as well as how to record the witness's statement under section CrPC 161, how to draw a rough sketch of the crime scene and other investigative matters.
“So far 456 JIOs have registered 15820 cases since the launch of the JIO project in Prakasam district. JIOs had investigated 15211 cases, of which they had completed investigation in 11998 cases and filed a final report in the court, while 3214 cases were under investigation,” SP Kaushal told ‘TOI’.
He said that it was no ordinary achievement as for many head constables it was first-time to handle the investigation on their own. After going through the CD files, SP advised as many as 62 JIOs to take the advice and suggestions of mentor-1 and mentor-2 to expedite the investigation. “I was really worried about handling the investigation when the task was handed to me by appointing as JIO as they usually handled just bandobast duties in the past. It was a thrilling and also great learning experience,” said JIO (Head Constable) S D Hussain. He had reached the level of gathering the necessary evidence so that the accused could be punished in court.
DTC DSP G. Ramakrishna, SB-2 Inspector N. Srikanth Babu, Covid Cell Inspector Feroze, DTC Inspector Y. Srinivasa Rao, Command Control Inspector R. Rambabu, Ongole One Town CI Ch. Sitaramayya, Ongole taluka CI Sivaramakrishna, SIs and JIOs have participated in this event.