Activists complain Cantonment police not lodging first information reports as they lack legal consultant; post vacant for 80 days now
Activists complain Cantonment police not lodging first information reports as they lack legal consultant; post vacant for 80 days now
Environmentalists in the city are a fed-up lot. They allege that their written complaints have not been officially converted to a first information report (FIR) in the past two-and-a-half months owing to the absence of a legal consultant.
|
| Complaints piling up: Activists say there are at least 20 written complaints lying with the Cantonment police that are waiting to be converted to FIRs. Representation pic |
Noted tree lovers Vaibhav Gandhi, Sanjay Bhosale and V R Jain had filed a complaint on December 15.
"Our complaints are not being converted into an FIR just because there is no legal consultant in the police station. They can just consult someone from another police station," said Jain. "We know that the Cantonment police do not file an FIR under the pretext that there are no legal advisors in the police station. This just indicates their irresponsibility."
Gandhi said, "Our application was not unusual. It was just a complaint about illegal tree cutting in the vicinity of Tilak Ayurveda College, Somwar Peth. We have also mentioned that PMC's horticulture officer M R Balwadkar threatened us with dire consequences if we went to file a complaint with the police."
Home Minister R R Patil announced three months ago that any written complaint could be converted into an FIR in 24 hours and it is obligatory for all police station across the state to do so.u00a0 "When our written complaint is 72 days old, why hasn't it been converted into an official FIR?" asked Sanjay Bhosale.
According to Bhosale, there are at least 20 such written complaints lying with the Cantonment police.u00a0
