Top level review meeting calls for prioritizing rule of law
Lucknow: On the instructions of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, following the policy of zero tolerance in the state, the efforts are being made in the direction of getting the harshest punishment to the criminals, mafia, accused involved in women and child crimes have been expedited. In this regard, a video conferencing was organized from Yojna Bhawan, through which a detailed review of the district wise efforts was done.
Presiding over the video conferencing, Additional Chief Secretary, Home, Avnish Kumar Awasthi said that effective action should be ensured against various types of mafia in the state under the Gangster Act, so that the government would take strict action against the criminals at the ground level.
The Additional Chief Secretary, Home, expected the entire machinery of the Prosecution Department to work with more dynamism and extend its full dedication and cooperation towards further strengthening the spirit of rule of law in the state. He guaged progress so far in providing maximum punishment such as death penalty, life imprisonment, 10 years or more and 10 years or less term by effective lobbying for criminals involved in mafia, heinous criminals, women and child crimes.
Awasthi said that after identifying the top 10 criminals in each police station of the state, effective action should be ensured against them as per rules and a constant vigil should be kept on them. If crime is committed by these criminals in any district, then the responsibility of the concerned police station level and other concerned police officer of the said district will be fixed.
Principal Secretary, Justice said that effective review of the pending cases in the district under the Gangster Act should be done in the meeting of the Monitoring Cell and the full details of the witnesses along with their phone numbers should also be recorded in the charge sheet so that the prosecution could get help. He also laid special emphasis on making proper efforts for the protection of witnesses.
Director General of Police, Mukul Goel said that the officers associated with the prosecution work have a special importance in providing maximum punishment to the criminals by providing effective prosecution, for which they will have to discharge their responsibility with full dedication and sincerity. He laid special emphasis on early filing of pending chargesheet and final report cases in the court.
Additional Director General of Police, Prosecution, Ashutosh Pandey while emphasizing on the effective use of ICJS system, said that it helps the Police, Prosecution, Prisons Department to get information related to the court immediately. He also said that the work from debate, charge framing to final debate should be planned in a time bound manner so that better results can be achieved.
According to the priorities of the government through video conferencing, criminals and mafia should be punished with harsh punishment and crimes against women and girls, Arms Act and Excise Act related to poisonous liquor in the context of next 100 days program under the upcoming scheme. District-wise detailed evaluation of the actions taken in the last seven days in related crimes under this campaign was done in related crimes.
While reviewing the action taken against the top 25 identified mafia and their gangs, it was informed that in the last one week, two criminals were punished in Fatehpur district and one each in Badaun, Jalaun, Banda, Hamirpur and Mau. The rest of the districts are making meaningful efforts in this direction.
In the last one week in the POCSO courts, 48 cases were solved in the state. Jhansi and Bareilly have maximum 5 and 4 respectively and Barabanki, Varanasi, Kanpur Nagar, Jalaun and Sitapur 3-3, Chandauli, Gautam Budh Nagar and Rae Bareilly 2-2 and Agra, Budaun, Basti, Gonda, Bahraich, Balrampur, 1-1 punishment was carried out in Etawah, Auraiya, Ayodhya, Amethi, Meerut, Baghpat, Bulandshahr, Hapur, Saharanpur, Fatehpur, Banda and Bhadohi.
In the last week, a total of 25 accused in sexual, rape and other serious crimes against women were punished. In this, 6 accused were sentenced to life imprisonment, 4 to 10 years or more and 15 to less than 10 years. Shahjahanpur and Budaun are the districts which have given life imprisonment to maximum 3-3 accused in this campaign. Two accused were punished in Aligarh district and 1 each in Kanpur Nagar and Ghazipur for punishment of ten years or more. The maximum number of 6 accused were punished in Gonda district, 3 in Jalaun, 2 in Muzaffarnagar and one in Agra, Amroha, Sambhal and Kanpur Nagar.
Progress was reviewed last week in offenses of Special and Local Law (SLL) such as the Arms Act and the Poisonous Liquor Excise Act.
In total 48 cases of Arms Act, maximum number of 9-9 accused were convicted in Rampur and Bijnor district, 7 in Hapur, 5 in Moradabad, 4 in Ghaziabad, Firozabad, Etawah, Kheri, 2-2 in Sultanpur and Sambhal, Kanpur. In Nagar, Meerut, Unnao, Gautam Budh Nagar and Mahoba, 1-1 accused were punished. Along with this, punishment was given in the Excise Act related to spurious liquor.
In this video conferencing held under the chairmanship of Additional Chief Secretary, Home Avnish Kumar Awasthi, Principal Secretary, Justice, Pramod Srivastava, Director General of Police, Mukul Goyal, ADG Law and Order, Prashant Kumar, Additional Director General of Police, Prosecution, Ashutosh Pandey and Additional Director General of Police, Women and Child Protection Organization, Neera Rawat, Additional Director General of Police, Crime, KSP Kumar along with senior officers of Home, Police and Prosecution Department were present.
District Magistrates of all the districts of the state, four police commissioners, senior superintendent of police / superintendent of police, D.G.C., A.D.G.C., Joint Director of Prosecution and all prosecution officers of prosecution cadre also participated in the review meeting.
