AGARTALA, September 5 (TIWN): Chief Minister cum Home Minister Manik Sarkar, who is in charge of President’s colour recipient police department, which is repeatedly failing to investigate one after another crime properly due to CPI-M's political involvements. Police here in general are stuck in the past, using out-dated methods to deal with modern-day offences.Even Chief Justice of High Court of Tripura, Justice Deepak Gupta once stated the crime investigation was sub-standard – with many officers lacking vital skills.“Some police officers had not investigated a crime for years.The police in too many respects are policing many crimes of today with the methods of yesterday” said an retired senior police officer requesting anonymity.“The kind of police officer needed today is much more tech-savvy and more sympathetic, with a wider range of skills – and yet today we are seeing the police predominantly policing yesterday’s crimes with yesterday’s methods and kit.”He added: “The police need to be much more capable in finding those crimes, dealing properly with the victim and solving the crime so they find the offenders and put them away.”The improvement had been “too sluggish” and that senior officers had to take part of the blame for their forces lagging behind the modern-day picture of crime.Chief Minister picked such a tainted IPS officer for the DGP’s post who himself indulged in financial crimes, charge-sheeted by CBI in March 29, 2007 for corruption of disproportionate assets case of purchasing real estates by spending 500 times money than the Nagraj’s known sources of income/ salary.

Overall, its matter of serious concern  … that there are signs of an erosion of officers’ basic investigative skills in relation to volume crime” such as burglary and theft.

For example, they failed to properly gather evidence from CCTV footage or fingerprints, identify suspects and support victims.

 In last one year, there were some murders in the state capital including that of Kalpana Das wife of Jiten Das - heavy weight leader of CPI (M) and once blue eyed boy of Maink Sarkar and the latest edition is murder of Santa Saha in government quarter at Shymali Bazaar, which is termed as a high security zone. Every time police have to bite the dust.           

In recent high profile case of Rs 51 crore MGNREGA scam, due to police ineptness in filing a proper chargesheet within 180 days, scamster Bimal Chakraborty got out in bail.