Keeping crime rate a secret by trimming DSR

Chennai: The Daily Situation Report (DSR), an internal reporting mechanism, maintained by city police is trimmed to keep crime rate under the wraps, at least when  statistics are made available in the public domain, according to sources.

The DSR will cover everything that happens in the jurisdiction of the particular police station which include crimes, petition inquiries,  number of petitions disposed of, street corner meetings allowed, permitted demonstrations, flash protests among other developments besides the forecast of important events.
Every complaint for which an acknowledgement from community service register (CSR) entry or registration of first-information-report (FIR), an entry will be made in DSR.

Sources said the leftover crimes are entered into non-DSR, an alternate report, which naturally will not be considered for registration of FIR. The non-DSR is an intangible oral account of crimes to superiors concerned, which has no accountability. These crimes never make it to the   weekly/monthly/annual review of crimes, and remain unreported.

The quantum of crimes which go unreported depends on the understanding between the inspector- ACP- DCP and so on, with senior officials. This is a call made by top police brass in the city to keep crime rate reported lesser than actual, sources said.

Sources said the list of crimes reported in DSR are the ones that make it to  Chennai City Crime Records Bureau (CRB), which will share it with the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB). This will be passed on to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).