Lucknow: At a time when Uttar Pradesh has earned the unfortunate sobriquet of being the “encounter capital” of India, former state top cop and BJP member Vijay Kumar believes that convicting a criminal in a court of law is the best way to counter crime.
Kumar told ThePrint that “engineered encounters” can leave a negative impact on police psychology if cops later got involved in legal matters.
The 1988 batch IPS officer, who was the state’s fourth acting director general of police (DGP) from May 2023 to January 2024, said chance encounters were different but the police should put conviction above encounter any day to tame the criminal ecosystem.
Kumar extolled the success of “Operation Conviction” that the police launched last July to get sentences faster for serious crimes. “Operation Conviction started under my tenure and 3,020 criminals involved in serious cases were punished. While 3,000 got life imprisonment, 20 got death sentences. We ensured exemplary punishment under it,” he said.
Kumar said a policeman should “spend the same energy in getting the accused convicted rather than thinking about killing someone”.
The former DGP said a five to six month of incarceration usually ended the active life of a criminal, suggesting every district be given a target of 50 convictions in heinous crimes per month. “I had given a target of 25 criminals punished in a month. It can be raised to 50.”
Kumar also said longer trials were a thing of the past now, and the fact that expeditious judicial proceedings were netting criminals sooner is being publicised by the police.
“Earlier, any trial would take 20 years… but we reduced that time to two or two and half months (in a heinous case). The 3,020 convictions in my tenure was a milestone which cops are now using as a campaign to create fear among criminals.”
He said a “convicted criminal” was a big deterrent to his family and villagers who wanted to follow in his path. “This is a big weapon which the police were not using. For this, we made a prosecution cell and started monitoring.”
Also read: Archaeology buff who pushed ‘panchang policing’ — Vijaya Kumar, 2nd retd DGP to join UP politics
‘BJP gave me freehand’
Kumar and his wife Anupama joined the BJP last week after he retired from service on 31 January.
Asked about the Election Commission’s recommendation for a cooling-off period before top bureaucrats could join a party after retirement, Kumar said it was irrelevant in his case as it was not a rule.
The central government had rejected the proposal given by the EC in 2012 in October 2013.
Kumar, who is from the Jalaun district of Bundelkhand, said he had not got any responsibility yet or a signal to contest the polls. “I will think about it if I get a proposal,” he said.
He was very impressed by the BJP government, since he was given a “free hand” to discharge duties. “I cleaned up the activities of the remaining gang members of (gangster) Prakash Shukla after his death,” he added.
Kumar is the second UP DGP to join a major political party after former DGP Brij Lal. Former UP DGP Sulkhan Singh floated the political outfit Bundelkhand Loktantrik Party with the demand for statehood for Bundelkhand as its main plank, but he is yet to make an electoral debut.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)