A window to the police station

At first, Bibi, who calls herself “not too worldly wise”, is slightly intimidated at this stark change from a police station. Then the receptionist directs her to two counters — at one is a woman constable and at the other, her male counterpart. Both are dressed in crisp white shirts, brown blazers, and brown ties. The only khaki element they retain are their trousers.

It is noon and there is no queue. The woman constable, Karamveer Kaur, smiles at Bibi and gives her a Daily Diary Report (DDR) form to fill. Bibi sits on one of the plastic chairs arranged in a row, and fills out the details — name, age, complaint, address, etc. She submits it to Kaur, who copies the information onto a computer and sends it to the central server of the Punjab Police, from where it can be accessed by the police station in whose jurisdiction the loss/theft took place. She gives Bibi a receipt of the DDR and informs her that she would have to approach the police station for follow-ups on her complaint.

Soon, more people have walked in. Simranjit Kaur, a BDS student, has come to register a complaint for her mother’s lost/stolen ATM card, while Lakhwinder Singh and Amarjeet Singh are here to report the loss of their cellphones. Kaur repeats the procedure with each.

This saanjh kendra in Phase-1 Mohali handles, on an average, 50 walk-ins every day. Set up in 2012 by the Punjab government, the 363 saanjh kendras across the state deal with registration of foreigners, investigation of cases of missing passports, complaints of fraud by travel agents, NRI complaints, tenant verification, registration and investigation of servants, passport verification, police clearance certificate at time of foreign immigration, apart from other minor clearances.

Only heinous crimes such as murder, rape, abduction or drug trafficking are left to be handled by police stations. “Besides reducing the workload of police stations, we also spare people inconvenience,” says sub-inspector Narinder Singh who is in charge of the Phase-1 saanjh kendra. Each centre is headed by a sub-inspector and has at least two constables, one of them a woman, along with a receptionist. “The minimum educational requirement for the constable is senior secondary education. We train them in computers and communication skills for two weeks,” says Singh.

The centres are self-sustaining, with operating costs, including staff salaries, phone/electricity bills and computer maintenance, compensated by the collection of fees — complainants are charged between Rs 5 and Rs 200 for services offered.

Having uploaded some 25 complaints by 2 pm, Kaur takes a lunch break. “I joined the police department three years ago but for the last two years, I am with this centre. I was trained for 15 days in public dealing as well as computers before I was assigned here,” she says. Though she feels that this work is “less challenging” than being deployed at a police station”, Kaur prefers the saanjh kendra. “It’s a 9-5 job, and suits me because I have two little children.”

The Phase-1 centre is among the “busiest” saanjh kendras. But the numbers don’t really suggest a hectic schedule. “Between September 17, 2012, and May 1, 2014,” says Singh, “the centre issued 9,469 DDRs, carried out 6,779 tenant verifications, 322 service verifications, 547 character verifications, 5,440 passport verifications and offered services to 23,285 people”.

Perhaps, it’s because the centres only help a person with the first step in dealing with the police. The next visit has to be to the police station.