Independence Day is right around the corner, and the countrywide capital is in a kingdom of excessive alert. But at the back of the enormous deployment of employees, scanners, cameras, and barricades, lies a tale of utter negligence on a vital safety-associated problem: Proper identity of human beings dwelling in a particular vicinity. The obligatory tenant and servant verification system – aimed at detecting criminal historical past, if any, and maintaining a database on human beings residing beneath a police station-has damaged down in Delhi-NCR. Rather, it has emerged as a money-making undertaking for sure police officers and property-sellers. Mail Today visited about 25 police stations in Delhi and Noida to check on the verification manner. In most police stations, the verification paperwork had been discovered dumped, collecting dirt without a movement being taken to finish the manner.
“Gone are the one’s days while the owner and tenant or enterprise and home assist would visit worried police stations for verification. Now property dealers, retailers or touts come and put up the stuffed-up form, and get a receipt,” stated a reputable at a police station in South Delhi. Against anything between Rs 1,000 and Rs1,500, the assets dealers and touts are domestic-turning in receipts of the verification bureaucracy. The receipt incorporates a stamp of the worried police station and is taken into consideration to be the remaining phrase on someone’s innocence. Many tenants in Delhi and Noida said they were given the verification receipt without having to visit the police station, and that their landlords are regularly occurring it without a word. “From Malviya Nagar, my own family shifted to Sector 46 in Noida. The assets provider took Rs 1, two hundred more and gave me an acknowledgment slip at your step earlier than I shifted,” stated Abhishek Sharma (name modified), a businessman, who claimed to have availed the identical ‘service’ in Malviya Nagar also.
In Noida, hire deeds are a scam in itself – every person can ‘buy’ a blank lease agreement on a notarised Rs a hundred stamp paper. Posing as a capacity customer, Mail Today found that during Sectors 16 and 18, notary officials had been promoting blank rent agreements for simply Rs 200-Rs 300. “Blank lease agreements may be misused by filling wrong/fake data approximately the residence. Then, with the assist of that hire settlement, any file may be obtained. These techniques are frequently used by sleeper cells of terror clothes and with the aid of criminals. This is the cause why in maximum of the instances the recovered or seized files end up cast,” said a source in Delhi Police Crime Branch.
Speaking to Mail Today, LN Rao, former Deputy Commissioner of Delhi Police, claimed that these verifications are merely an eyewash. “It is finished simplest for the psychological satisfaction, now not for actual history check. It simply creates an impression that the tenant’s details are with police. However, the police officers don’t make any effort to follow up with the concerned police station of different states (to vouch for beyond addresses of the tenant),” Rao stated. Delhi Police spokesperson Madhur Verma said, “All verification varieties of the applicant are sent to his/her worried police station (from wherein he/she belongs) to check for any crook history or get a character certificate. In almost all instances, the police of different states fail even to deliver any revert at the case.” In Noida, tenant or home assist verification bureaucracy is not even to be had at police stations and one has to journey to the SSP’s workplace in Surajpur, Greater Noida to get a shape. Often the receipts are given across the desk in opposition to a small ‘payment.’ However, a Noida police spokesperson claimed the departments take all verification forms seriously and send them for essential historical past checks. “Several consciousness campaigns have been undertaken, but landlords have now not yet understood the significance of tenant verification,” stated Chinmoy Biswal, DCP Delhi Police (south-east).
