JOIN USTwo days after a karaoke singer alleged that an Ola driver molested her at a desolate place in southern Bengaluru, police insisted that it’s not their job to check the antecedents of private sector workers, especially cab drivers.
“We do have a mechanism to verify the background of all kinds of employees, including cab drivers and security guards. But it is up to employers to make use of our service, and it isn’t free,” a senior police officer said on the condition of anonymity.
Crime and Criminal Tracking Networks and Systems (CCTNS) and Police IT are used to check whether criminal cases are pending against a prospective employee. The digital tools store all FIRs registered in Karnataka. Nearly 1,000 prospective employees are checked at the police commissioner’s office every day.
A simple verification takes up to three days while in-depth checking is time-consuming since it is carried out by the jurisdictional police station. The verification process, however, is not foolproof. First of all, police do not carry out physical verification of a driver’s residence. Many cab owners take advantage of the loophole by renting their vehicles to unregistered drivers on the Ola and Uber platforms.
“There are people who have attached three or four cars to both Ola and Uber using the documents of several drivers. How will you check who is driving which vehicle?” a driver attached to both Ola and Uber said.
An applicant can manage to get a No Objection Certificate (NOC) even if he/she was involved in any crime outside Karnataka since the CCTNS and Police IT are not a nationwide repository of FIRs. The officer suggested that cab drivers be asked to obtain NOCs in every state. A simpler solution is to consolidate crime records from all states, which will give police access to the nationwide database.
But even if that happens, criminally inclined people can still get jobs. There is no guarantee that a cab driver having an NOC from police will not molest or rape a woman or rob a passenger. The solution? Ask them to renew the NOC at regular intervals, according to the officer.
Most importantly, the officer said, cab aggregators like Ola and Uber must make police verification a pre-requisite for hiring drivers. He said prospective employees having a criminal record might not apply for police verification for fear of getting caught. “We can’t prevent such drivers from being hired. The companies need to make police verification mandatory for all employees,” he said.
DH News Service
‘Flawed’ police verification
It’s basically a process to check if any criminal case is pending against a prospective employee.
Police have access to FIRs registered in Karnataka only.
A cab driver having a criminal case in other states can still pass police verification test in Karnataka.
Police verification is a one-time affair. An employee can commit a crime after getting an NOC from police.