ROZNAMCHA - POLICE DAILY DIARY

ROZNAMCHA - POLICE DAILY DIARY

Section 44 of POLICE ACT 1861 reads “Police-officers to keep diary.--It shall be the duty of every officer in charge of a police-station to keep a general diary in such form shall, from time to time, be prescribed by the State Government and to record therein all complaints and charges preferred, the names of all persons arrested, the names of the complainants, the offences charged against them, the weapons or property that shall have been taken from their possession or otherwise, and the names of the witnesses who shall have been examined. The Magistrate of the district shall be at liberty to call for and inspect such diary”. And according to rule no; 22.48 of the Police Rules 1934, “Shortly before the close of each quarter, books containing the proper number of pages ensuring the three months shall be issued to police station by the Superintendent.  The Superintendent shall fix the hours at which station diaries shall be daily closed with reference to the dispatch of the post or messenger”. However, adequate number of books is not issued by the SSP office in many districts. As a result, officials of various police stations make their own arrangements by using bundles of papers or books purchased from the market, and this practice is punishable by law which allows room for abuse. As rule no; 22.50 of the Police Rules 1934 reads- “Punishment for making false entry - Any police officer who enter or causes to be entered in the daily dairy which he knows, or has reason to believe, to be untrue, whether he has or has not been directed to make such entry by a superior officer, shall ordinarily be dismissed the service. A copy this rule and also a copy of the certificate shall be affixed to the cover of the daily dairy in every police station and in lines as - Certified that this register contains-- leaves in duplicate. No page should be removed from it. Wrong entries, if any, should be scored out by means single line and initialed by a Senior Police Officer; in no case should any such entry be mutilated or rendered illegible nor should paper be pasted over it-.”

The practice of routine is the police officials use erasable lead pencil to make entries in the Roznamchas. As these entries are not permanent and can be easily removed, police officials often change them to abuse their authority and hence fail the very purpose for which a Roznamcha is maintained. The most common abuse relates to the legal requirement that police officials making an arrest must immediately record all relevant facts in the Roznamcha. This legal requirement is meant to ensure that the arrested person is treated in accordance with the law and is produced in court within 24 hours of the arrest. However, in practice, police officials make such entries with a lead pencil and frequently change them to skip their responsibilities. It is, therefore, possible that a person is actually arrested much earlier but is shown to be arrested on the Roznamcha much later than the actual date. Therefore it is a time of need to be immediately questioned for correctness, by authorities concerned. Farhan Khaliq Anwer Advocate. Cell: 03002165271, duaapk@hotmail.com,  thelordslawmagazine@gmail.com