T.N. the safest State with low crime rate: DGP Shankar Jiwal

TN DGP: TN is one of safest States in India; police take steps for public welfare; 64.5 offences/lakh pop. nationally, 22.4 in TN; no major disruption of public order; police investigate allegations of increased crime; drugs seized in record numbers; no place for police excesses; 800-900 calls/day on helpline; cyber crimes 15-20x more than IPC cases.

Tamil Nadu Director-General of Police (DGP) and Head of Police Force Shankar Jiwal has said Tamil Nadu is one of the safest States, with the lowest crime rate, in the country. He made the statement on Tuesday while interacting with journalists of The Hindu and listed the steps taken by the police for public welfare.

Explaining that law and order is understood by the statistics presented, he said, “64.5 offences per lakh population are against women. That is the national average. The Tamil Nadu average is 22.4. Many of the parameters with respect to the offences in our country are defined by the National Crime Records Bureau, which is a repository of all statistics with respect to crimes. Tamil Nadu is one of the safest [States]. From a statistical point of view, there is no law and order issue at all.”

But Mr. Jiwal added, “It is for [members of] the public to judge... Tamil Nadu handles the largest number of protests, rallies and demonstrations in the country. It’s such a democratic place. What other parameters do you want? Especially in view of not a single major instance of disruption of public order affecting the daily routine of citizens.”

He said, “Whenever law and order issues come up, we, at the [police] headquarters, immediately look into them. There are allegations in some quarters that murders have gone up suddenly at certain places or crimes have gone up. So, we investigate such allegations and find that they are not true.” He said the statistics showed that there were fewer murders than in the previous years. Moreover, they were not predominantly due to the caste factor, or revenge murders by rowdies.

The DGP dismissed the perception that drugs were available everywhere. “The police have a two-pronged approach: supply reduction and demand reduction. Supply reduction means the role of the police. If you see our seizure, we have crossed an all-time high... We have seized a large quantity of drugs, with a record high seizure of cannabis and scheduled drugs like nitrazepam and tapentadol... The performance of the police is pretty good in supply reduction. In demand reduction, we are coming up with a lot of awareness and we have a separate wing looking after it...”

To a question on the measures to curb police excesses, Mr. Jiwal noted, “There is no place for excesses on the part of the police... We have clear standards. Because police excesses bring us a bad name. Luckily, we do not have any custodial death in the last one year; earlier, the State had seen an average of five or six custodial deaths a year.” He said that whenever any allegation of police excesses was reported, a due inquiry by a sub-divisional magistrate or a judicial magistrate was conducted.