Why this police unit is one of India's top crimebusters

When it comes to crime detection, there is no police station better than Gudageri.

The rural police station in Karnataka’s Dharwad district has found a place among the top five police stations in the country, riding on almost 100% crime detection, according to a Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) survey.

Gudageri was ranked fifth in the Quality Council of India for Ministry of Home Affairs’ (MHA) ‘Ranking of Police Stations 2018’. Though the rankings were publicised in December last year, a detailed report on the parameters and how they fared has been made public only now.

Ahead of Gudageri in the rankings were Rajasthan’s Kalu, Andaman and Nicobar’s Campbell Bay, West Bengal’s Farakka police stations and Puducherry’s Nettapakkam.

On parameters such as infrastructure, approachability and citizen feedback, Gudageri police station is ranked 19th out of 87 police stations.

But it improved its overall ranking because of its high score in prevention and disposal of crimes, action against anti-social elements and community policing. When it came to performance, the police station is ranked fourth, pushing its over-all ranking up to fifth.

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

Commenting on the enviable performance when it came to crime detection, Inspector Naveen Jakkali said all 82 cases registered in 2017 at the police station were solved.

“In 2018, 101 crimes were reported and 91 of them were solved,” he said. Majority of the crimes reported were murders, rape, atrocities on women and SC/STs and a few communal clashes.

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

In other best practices, petrol bunks were equipped with CCTV cameras and Whatsapp groups have been formed for each village. As a result, villagers have just to inform their problem through Whatsapp instead of coming all the way to the police station.

Police stations were short-listed on the basis of crimes against women and SC/ST and property offences. Three police stations were selected 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 considered.