As per the division of work, situations that upsets a locality like murder, protests and suicides are handled by the law and order section, crimes such as snatching, theft, burglary, cheating and other white-collar crimes are handled by the crime wing. 

Though the numbers are overwhelming, the strength of the crime wing is just about a third of the other sections in most of the stations. Even that limited number is further depleted, as a chunk of them are assigned other duties, leaving the crime inspectors with three or four police personnel to deal with all such crimes in the locality. “If it is a murder for gain, it is also investigated by the crime team. But they are not given their due respect,” said a crime inspector, who was recently transferred to the city from a southern district. 

“A Law and Order inspector will be provided with 45 personnel. So he has the luxury of keeping two drivers to travel anywhere, but crime inspectors will have to drive vehicles on their own due to lack of personnel,” said another senior crime inspector. According to him, the situation would have been better if the crime wing had separate Assistant Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners as it used to be. 

“I must show a strength of 15 personnel under me, but half of them will be reporting to higher officials for daily duty and some will be posted for bandobust. When Kannappan was Madurai Commissioner, he made sure that number of blue ink (personnel in the station) and the red ink (those posted for outside duties) are balanced,” he said.

A woman crime inspector posted in one of the business hubs said they were burdened with so many cheating complaints every day that they could hardly focus on other responsibilities. “It is easy to register an FIR and remand the accused in a cheating complaint. But the victims want their money back and make us negotiate with accused,” she said on condition of anonymity. 

A few crime inspectors DT Next spoke to said that their job was far from easy. For the law and order police, only cases that fall within their jurisdiction need to be attended to. “But crime inspectors will have to travel beyond to trace the culprits. Also, in case of a street fight, the victims themselves will identify the suspects, whereas in cases that we handle, even the victims will clueless. It is the police’s job to untie the knots and solve the crime. It requires expertise and knowledge. But due to ignorance, many look down upon the work and prefer law and order posts,” said another inspector.

Agreeing that crime inspectors were facing hardship, a senior Deputy Commissioner said the higher officials should do something about it. “The strength for crime, and law and order wings were decided based on archaic rules. But the kind of offences that crime wing have become sophisticated. Seven years ago, steps were taken to classify police stations under three sections to decide the number of police personnel, from 100 to 50, depending on the size and type of jurisdiction. But it was abandoned for some reason. If it is done, crime wing might get due prominence,” said the official.