Solving heinous crimes? SIT is the cops’ answer!

Panchkula police has set up six teams so far, but none have been successful in cracking cases

Panchkula, September 9
The Panchkula police seems to taken a penchant for constituting special investigation teams (SITs) on unsolved cases. Six SITs have been formed in the recent past to uncover heinous cases of crime, but all have remained undetected.
In an important development, showcasing the inadequacy of SITs in the kidnapping case of Panchkula-based realtor Deepak Rai Sagar, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has handed over the probe to the CBI.
The Panchkula police had constituted an SIT in the credit card cloning cases, in which a number of Panchkula residents had lost more than Rs 40 lakh to fraudsters.
An SIT was also formed in the case of murder of a Berkeley Automobiles security guard and the subsequent robbery of Rs 14.5 lakh.
Others were set up in the cases of kidnapping of two-year-old Jiya and one-and-a-half-year-old Arnav. In both cases, the abductors released them after taking huge sums from the parents, but the police failed to nab the kidnappers.
In the double murder case of Panchkula-based financier Vinod Mittal and his son Yashan, in which the accused had thrown the bodies in the Rajpura canal, the police had formed an
SIT. Four of the accused were arrested, but the main accused, Raju and Shilpa, were still at large. Sources said top officials formed SITs to crack cases, but during investigation, police officials who were part of the SITs would be transferred, hampering the probe.
The sources added that in most cases, circumstantial evidence had been lost and it was not possible to reconstruct the crime scene and collect vital samples from the spot.
Panchkula Superintendent of Police Maneesh Chaudhary said it would be wrong to suggest that SITs had failed to crack cases. He added that in the double murder case, the police had arrested a majority of the accused and only the main accused were at large.
Regarding the status of the other cases, he stated that they were still investigating the cases and had not closed the probe in any of those.

Cases concerned Berkeley murder-and-loot case: Formed in January, 2011, but to no avail Credit card cloning case: Constituted under DSP (Crime) Ram Chandar Rathi on November 24, 2010 Arnav kidnapping case: Formed in October, 2010, but did not succeed Deepak Rai Sagar kidnapping case: Set up in November, 2009, but case transferred to CBI Jiya kidnapping case: Constituted on October 25, 2009, but no breakthrough Vinod and Yashan Mittal murder case: Set up in March, 2009; police held four accused, main accused at large

What is SIT? A special investigation team involves experts who focus on a specific case. No time limit is given to them to catch the culprits. The cases they deal with can be those involving murder, robbery, kidnapping or crimes that involve a large number of suspects. The SIT head reports directly to the Superintendent of Police in the district.