More than 1,000 people booked in the case of power thefts are declared as proclaimed offenders out of 7,200 POs of the national capital, a police officer said.
Court declares an accused a Proclaimed Offender, or PO, if the person evades arrest and fails to appear in a court despite having a warrant issued against him.
Recently, a data of proclaimed offenders was compiled by the Delhi Police from various district courts and was submitted to the National Informatics Centre to develop a platform with a database of POs from Delhi.
The NIC was directed by the Delhi High Court in July to develop a software for uploading the names and details of such offenders so that the general public could assist the police with information on their whereabouts and help them take action against them.
The court had ordered that Delhi Police and the district courts would be responsible for uploading the data of proclaimed offender/proclaimed persons in criminal cases and the Director/In-charge of Inter-operable Criminal Justice System would ensure all possible technical and tactical support to the project.
The court also said that a court-appointed committee headed by the Principal District and Sessions Judge (Headquarter) here will monitor the implementation of its directions.
The court said the data will be uploaded initially on the internal servers and later on the public platform to be developed by the NIC after verification.
According to the data so far gathered, a total of 7,200 people have declared PO by the district courts over the past several years.
Out of these, about 2,300 were booked under check bounce cases, 1,050 under electricity theft, 170 under other thefts, 104 under negligent driving, 144 under cheating, and 90 under drug-related cases. At least 40 of them were declared PO under murder and five under rape cases.
The data reveals Delhi’s Connaught Place Police Station has 320 POs, Tilak Nagar 206, Okhla Industrial Area 175, Barakhamba 168, Rajouri Garden 160, Punjabi Bagh 150, and Malviya Nagar 121.
An official said out of the 7,200 POs, 5,000 have been verified by the Delhi police personnel, either by visiting their addresses or other intelligence means.
”The verification of the remaining 2,000 POs is still on. The Delhi police officers do the verification to ascertain the existence of these POs, since the records from these 7,000 POs suggest that some of these POs are even from 1980-90s,” said an officer.
The NIC has finished building the software for PO management system and it is ready to be used,” the officer said.
”But right now it is not available for people. Once the court gives its nod, it will be available for the public too,” said the person.
The NIC under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is the technology partner of the Government of India.
According to its website, the centre was established in 1976 with an objective to provide technology-driven solutions to central and state governments in various aspects of development.
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