STATE TIMES NEWS
Jammu: The Jammu and Kashmir government on Monday declared six units of UT’s police department as police stations, according them the statutory power to register and probe a wide range of offences, including those with political motive or involving arms and ammunition.
The J&K government made the new arrangement through a notification issued by its Home Department.
The notification signed by Financial Commissioner (Additional Chief Secretary) R K Goyal declared Special Crime Wings, Economic Offences Wings and Cyber Crime Investigation Centers for Excellence of both Jammu and Srinagar regions as police stations.
The notification also bestowed upon all six units of the Crime Branch of the UT police statutory powers under the Criminal Procedure Code.
It also made the superintendents of police, heading SCWs and EOWs of both Jammu and Srinagar and deputy SPs heading CICEs of Jammu and Srinagar as the station house officer of their units, now declared police stations.
The six police stations shall for the purpose of registration and investigation of offences, specified against each, exercise territorial jurisdiction within their respective units at the divisional level and the offences shall be investigated on the orders of the head of the Crime Branch, the order said.
The order said apart from offences specified for probe by these police stations, any other case(s), as may be deemed necessary, may be referred by the government or the J&K director general of police to the Crime Branch chief for registration and investigation by respective police stations.
As per the notification’s annexure, the SCWs will register and investigate any serious crime which appears to have a political motive, including all offences involving arms and ammunition and theft of government arms and ammunition and illicit trade in arms.
Other cases to be investigated by the SCWs include fraud and cheating of a peculiar nature involving an amount below Rs 20 lakhs and having ramification in one district besides offences breaching the Cinematograph Act of 1952, the Copy Right Act, Trade Marks Act, 1999 (GI Tagging) and Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.
The SCWs would also probe into extortions by organised gangs having inter-district or inter-state ramifications.
The EOWs will register and investigate cases involving preparation and circulation of fake Indian Currency notes, frauds by means of advertisements by bogus finance firms, service consultancies and those of professional criminals posing as public servants.
Such case should be involving a sum of Rs 20 lakh or more, it said.
The EOWs will also investigate cases of fraud and cheating involving an amount of Rs 20 lakh or mor and having inter-district ramification, besides cases of misappropriation of public funds, those of criminal breach of trust by public servants, thefts of cultural objects, trade in human body parts and those of land grabbing or real estate frauds.
These will also deal in cases of bank or insurance frauds, racketeering in false travel documents and employment credit or debit card frauds, corporate and company frauds, besides theft of intellectual property and trade mark and copyrights violations.
The CICEs will look into cases related to pornography and cybercrimes under the Information Technology Act.
