Karnataka's Gudageri among top five police stations

Gudageri in Karnataka's Dharwad is among the top five police stations in the country riding on almost 100% crime detection but a Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) report suggests that it ranks a bit lower when it comes to infrastructure and citizen feedback.

Its overall position in the 'Ranking of Police Stations 2018' was fifth after Rajasthan's Kalu, Andaman and Nicobar's Campbell Bay and West Bengal's Farakka police stations.

But when it comes to specific ranking on infrastructure, approachability and citizen feedback, Gudageri police station is ranked 19th out of 87 police stations surveyed by Quality Council of India for Ministry of Home Affairs' (MHA) 'Ranking of Police Stations 2018'.

Its overall ranking improved only because of its high score on its performance when it comes to prevention, detection and disposal of crimes, action against anti-social elements and community policing, according to a detailed MHA report on the ranking. On the performance ranking, the police station is ranked fourth, pushing its over-all ranking to fifth.

The rankings were publicised in December last year but a detailed report on the parameters and how they fared in performance as well as infrastructure and citizen feedback is made public now only.

Inspector General of Police (Karnataka Northern Range) Raghavendra Suhas told DH that this ranking would help motivate police officers in rural India to increase their productivity.

Gudageri stood the scrutiny as it had registered 100% detection of crime in 2017 as it managed to solve all the 82 cases it registered. In 2018, 101 crimes were reported and 91 of them had been detected, said inspector Naveen Jakkali. Majority of the crimes reported were murders, rape, atrocities on women and SC/STs and very few communal clashes.

In pro-active measures to curb crimes, the station in-charge had appointed one constable each for 21 villages coming under the jurisdiction of the station. The beat constable would visit his assigned village four times in a month and interact with the villagers and try to sort out the problems if any.

In other best practices, petrol bunks were equipped with CCTV cameras and WhatsApp groups have been formed for each village and the villagers have to just mention their problems through the WhatsApp group and are not required to come all the way to the police station.

Police stations were short-listed on the basis of crime against women, crime against SC/ST and property offences. Three police stations each from states having more than 750 police stations, two from other states and one each from union territories were chosen. States having multiple police stations in the top three were all considered.

From Karnataka, there were three more in the list of police stations chosen for the survey besides Gudageri -- Gadag (Traffic), Somwarpet in Kodagu and Saligrama in Mysuru.

Gadag managed an overall ranking of 11 with its performance ranking at 10 and infrastructure and feedback ranking at 56. Somwarpet had an overall ranking of 42 while its performance ranking at 41 and infrastructure and feedback ranking at 61.

For Saligrama, the overall ranking was 65 and performance ranking at 63. This is the only police station in Karnataka, which has a better ranking on infrastructure and feedback ranking (45) compared to its performance ranking.

“The criteria for choosing the best police stations in the country was primarily their performance in crime prevention, investigation and disposal of cases, crime detection, community policing and maintenance of law and order. A weightage of 20% was also given to the infrastructure of police stations and the citizen feedback on the performance of the police personnel,” Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba said in the report.