Ahmedabad

To increase conviction rate, the Gujarat Anti-Corruption Bureau has requested the state government to set up a special ACB court and also demanded a dedicated public prosecutor to fight their cases.

According to ACB Director Ashish Bhatia, various steps are being taken to streamline their operations and to bring culprits to justice through speedy trial.

“Our conviction ratio is around 30 per cent. Thus, out of 100 people we arrested last year, 30 were convicted by court,” he said.

“To increase this ratio, we have recently sent a proposal to the government to set up a special ACB court and appoint a dedicated public prosecutor to fight our cases,” said Bhatia during the year-end press conference here today.

Apart from these facilities, the ACB has also requested the government to provide more staff.

“It is true that ACB is facing staff crunch. We have also sent a proposal to the government to introduce a scheme to incentivise those who wish to join ACB. To attract policemen to join us, we have also proposed to give special pay package to these officers,” he said.

Giving details of some recent initiatives taken by the ACB to strengthen their cases, Bhatia said, “To strengthen our case from the beginning, we have recently appointed a legal adviser, who guides us about how to carry out our operations.

We have also introduced videography of our operations, so that it can be used as credible evidence in the court.”

As per details provided by the ACB, 305 corruption cases were registered in 2015 as against 275 last year. This year, 445 government employees and middlemen were arrested as against 395 last year.

Out of the 445 people arrested this year, 15 were class-1 officers, 42 class-2, 285 class-3, 10 class-4 and 93 were either private persons or middlemen, a release said.

The state Home department once again topped the charts of corruption-related cases with 141 arrests in 96 cases this year. It was followed by Panchayat department with 74 arrests in 56 cases and Revenue department with 43 arrests with 30 cases. Besides, 12 cases were registered against various Central government employees and their middlemen, it said.

To encourage people to come forward and seek help to uproot corruption, the ACB has also organised a Half-Marathon on January 3, ACB’s Additional Director Shamsher Singh said.

“Through this initiative, we want to reach out to people and urge them to take up the fight against corruption.

We expect that more than 10,000 runners will take part in this marathon,” Singh said.

PTI