From correspondents in Delhi, India, 08:30 AM IST

New Delhi - A radical proposal under the government's consideration could relieve police of a lot of its routine duties - that would be outsourced to private detective agencies - and leave them to concentrate on investigation and law and order.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has asked the National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science (NICFS) to prepare a draft proposing that some of the police duties be outsourced to the country's private detective agencies.

'The government is preparing a bill to regulate the functioning of detective agencies, and we may be given some of the duties done by the police,' Association of Private Detectives of India general secretary Captain Ravee (uses only one name) told IANS. The association has over 400 detective agencies as its members.

Ravee said a proposal was being made to delegate police duties, except law and order, to detective agencies. He also said that the bill would soon be presented in parliament.

Detectives might be asked to do jobs such as verification of passports, pre-employment verification, domestic servant verification and ensuring that traffic rule offenders pay their fines timely, he explained.

'Earlier, police used to give us cases for investigation unofficially, but now we would be given cases officially,' he said. 'We have provided vital information to police about spurious and fake products and identified people involved in cases on several occasions.'

A senior official of the NICFS said, 'The government has asked us to prepare the bill and we are in touch with the police, home ministry officials and detective agencies so as to ascertain the needs of all the parties concerned.'

He said the institute had organised a meeting among the departments concerned, inviting recommendations from them in January. The institute was of the opinion that even people with no police background could be asked to write complaints in police stations.

'We see that most of the people who go to a police station feel uncomfortable while speaking to not too well behaved police personnel and therefore it was earlier recommended that the filing of complaints be outsourced to agencies,' he said.

'We hope these recommendations would be included in the bill,' he said.

Senior officials of the NICFS also said that the bill was being drafted in such a way that the burden on police was lessened, allowing them to concentrate on other important issues like investigation and law and order.

'There is no specialisation needed for verification or writing complaints. This can be done by anyone and it is a waste of time for a policeman to be sitting in a police station just to do clerical work,' they said.

Through the legislation, the government would be able to control the functioning of detective agencies as well as benefit from their well qualified and trained manpower, they added.

Since most agency owners have a defence or police background, the quality of service rendered by them can be dependable.

(Staff Writer, © IANS)