Vidarbha Taxpayers Association (VTA) held its Executive Body Meeting chaired by its president Shrawan Kumar Malu recently; wherein the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill, 2022 was discussed in length and it was unanimously resolved that VTA should welcome such step initiated by the Union Government in order to curb crime by improving our conviction rate, which will also save judicial time.
Accordingly, VTA dispatched a letter of gratitude and support to Narendra Modi – Prime Minister, Amit Shah – Union Home Minister and Kiren Rijiju – Union Minister for Law & Justice, New Delhi in favour of the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill, 2022.
Shrawan Kumar Malu – president of VTA said, even the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) recommends that it is important to engage in data collection. And this new legislation will give powers to the police and prison authorities to legally collect samples such as fingerprints, palm-prints, foot-prints, iris and retina scans, and other physical and biological samples, photographs, signatures, and handwriting samples from convicted and arrested persons. While the earlier 1920 law allowed for collecting and recording of footprint impressions and fingerprints of only a certain category of convicts, whereas the 2022 legislation expands the categories of people from whom such data can be collected.
Tejinder Singh Renu – secretary of VTA said, we strongly believe that we need robust national data of criminals so that they are apprehended at the earliest after any crime is committed by them as now the criminals are also smart in carrying their illegal activities in different regions of the country to avoid easy doubt. And along with such data collection, we also need more forensic labs and time-bound trials of criminal courts with strong growth in conviction so that people start fearing the law.
VTA supports and welcomes the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill, 2022 and requests the central government that this law may please be enacted ASAP in the public interest.
Also present in the VTA meeting were J. P. Sharma – IPP, Hemant Trivedi and Yogendra Mohan Singh – vice presidents, Pawan K. Chopra – Treasurer, Amarjeet Singh Chawla – joint secretary, Executive Body Members Rohit Kanungo, Govind Patel, Pritish Gujarathi, Hemant Sharma and Harish Soni.
