DNA In-Depth: One man has all of Delhi's evidence

In the National Capital, there is only one man guarding the goods and evidences seized by the Delhi police. Seated in a bare 10x10 room with the windows shut is a man known as the district Nazir, who is in charge of all the case properties which have been seized over the years.

As you enter the building, you are welcomed by a wave of dust. It makes you cough. There are three rooms. In one, the Nazir sits. In another, police officers make entries of the items that they have got.

It would be a stretch to call it an office, yet that is what it is.

The Nazir's room has a ceiling fan that doesn't work. There is no air-conditioning. It must get really hot in the baking Delhi summers.

(The Nazir’s office is in the Tis Hazari courts complex, which is located in a  neighbourhood in old Delhi; a view of the office interior)

Two other people work with the Nazir and help him out. One of them quietly says that of the four staffers in the office, one got ulcers from drinking contaminated water.

The office of the district Nazir is situated in the Tis Hazari courts complex in North Delhi. As you spot the building with a blue board and climb the staircase up to his office, you are greeted by a kitchen and what seems to be a makeshift house.

On a counter rests a register in which officers from various police station across the National Capital make entries as they arrive to submit the recovered items which the court has directed for disposal.

From spoons and needles to semen and blood samples to cars and sofa sets, all sorts of things are found here.

"This is a shamshaan ghat. This is where we do the kriyakaram of the seized goods," says one of the staff members. For all the dearth of comfort, morbid humour abounds here in the Nazir's office. The entire abditory — or malkhana, as the officials call it — is spread over an area of around 400-500 sq feet. This is a tiny space for thousands of sundry items of all sizes that might be crucial in deciding court cases.

An open ground inside the complex is also given to the Nazir to store seized items that can't be kept inside a room, like vehicles.

One treasurer to care for them all?

Nazir is an Urdu word that refers to a court official who acts as a treasurer, processes the goods, evidences and vehicles he collects from the Delhi police investigators, and performs other related duties.

An official in the Delhi government said that before 1999, when the National Capital was counted as one district, it had only one deputy commissioner.

Due to this there was only one district Nazir. Later on, the National Capital was divided into nine districts and had independent deputy commissioners. But the Nazir's office continued to remain as one.

"When the whole of Delhi was counted as a district, the concept of a single deputy commissioner and only one Nazir worked fine. But later, there were nine districts which further went on to get divided into 11 districts as know today. Yet, there is only Nazir," says the official.

He says that at least five staff members are needed to bear the burden of the work. So if Delhi has 11 civic districts, there should be at least 11x5 people, that is 55 staffers.

"But as things stand, there is only one Nazir. So technically, one person is doing the work of 55 people. This is overburden," the official says.

Recently the Supreme Court asked the Delhi police commissioner to form a policy for junk vehicles piling up at police stations. The top court stated that in most cases registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, by the time the case reaches the court the investigating officer informs the judges that the drugs have been eaten up by rats.

The issue was raised in an affidavit submitted by the Delhi police which also mentioned that there was only one Nazir for the entire National Capital. The Nazir receives seized items for disposal for cases that go as far back as 1997. In some cases, even before this.

Sucked dry

Those who visit it and those who work there call the office of the district Nazir — this unventilated room whose walls seep — a "living hell".

But the complaints would never be on record. Staffers hesitate to issue grouses about it for fear they might be transferred. But anonymously, they are effusive in enumerating the issues related to the working conditions that prevail here. One of the workers grins and says: "Aapko toh abhi kum macchar kaat rahe hain. Baithiye pure din, aadat ho jayegi. (Not that many mosquitoes are biting you at this time. Spend a day here and you would know)."

People who work here and those who have worked here in the past have hosted many ailments. From cough to ulcers to low blood pressure, medical issues have plagued the staffers.

A water cooler outside the lavatory is broken. It has an ancient bottle placed over it. It is empty. It must have been around for a long long time, going by the numerous shades of green it is now draped in. To state the obvious, the office does not have clean water to drink.

"We do not have water to drink. The rest room also doesn't have any water. It is difficult to use a toilet when there is no water," says one of the workers who has suffered health issues because of the insalubrious conditions.
The toilet has a door. A three-feet-wide wall separates the commode from the wash stand. All is dry.

Rusting 'treasury'

Inside the malkhana, the air is musty with boxes, sofas, cylinders, coolers, clothes, rags. You name it, it's there. Some rusting, some rusted beyond recognition.

When property related to a case needs to be released on a court order, it is dusted off and sent out into the light of the day. For example, if the police seize a laptop as evidence from a crime scene, the family members can later ask for its release on directions from the court. The challenge is to make sure they are kept safely and in working condition, so they can be handed over when asked for.

The office employs a person who comes in to clean the space, but officials say that if anything goes missing, the blame would be placed on the cleaner and could possibly cost him his job.

"It is difficult to decide where to sweep. If he even moves his broom a centimetre amid the seized goods, something might get lost. We have things as tiny as a spoon or a needle, and at no point of time can we afford to lose it. We are answerable to the court after all," says the officer.

In a day's work

A usual day at the office of the Nazir begins at 9:30 am and goes on till about 6 pm. There are times the police officers who have seized vehicles arrive way before the office opens, as they have to deposit them at the ground. Later in the day, the traffic is heavy and towing seized vehicles might cause snarls inside the complex.

"The vehicles are usually rusted or damaged in an accident. To move them to the malkhana is a task. They have to be lifted by a crane and once a crane enters the court complex, the traffic comes to a standstill. It also takes time to move the vehicles. So the cops prefer coming in at around 7 am, which is way before the day begins for us," says one of the staffers at the Nazir's office. The police officers prefer early morning or late night to haul seized vehicles to the abditory.

The problems of the police officers are similar in nature and understood only too well by the Nazir. Some of the men in uniform are spotted inside the office. They have come to deliver some items. They say it is humanly impossible to fulfil their duties of the day while making a trip to the Tis Hazari court.

"We have court hearings to attend, law and order issues, work and above all, we need to bring the goods that are for disposal here. It gets hectic. At times, we do not know how and when to drop them here," said a police officer from the North-East district.

Staff crunch is acute, to put it mildly, and to add to that, the work is manual. All the entries of the goods are made by hand, in the register on the 'kitchen top'. An attempt at digitisation seems to have been too hopeful. The Internet has been down for almost three months when this correspondent makes her visit.

To categorise entries for convenience, different registers are maintained for different sorts of articles received from various police stations. Case properties range from under narcotics, country-made pistols, hooch and booze, gold and foreign currency. The registry system is a workaround under the circumstances, but jotting down things manually is tedious work.

Nazirs who have worked in the office in the past stated that the burden is excessive. "You receive calls from police officers late at night, asking if they could come in the morning at so-and-so time. In cases of some properties, such as weapons, only the Nazir can receive them. So it is important to be present," he said.

Is there a way out?

According to the staffers who carry out all this work, if the malkhana is digitised, it would make it easy for them as entries of various articles which need to be disposed of can be made online. This would reduce their headache, speed up the process, and minimise scope of errors.

A source in the Delhi government stated that a proposal to decentralise the functioning of the 'district' Nazir's office has been floated many times, keeping in mind his rising workload and the fact that the 'district' has expanded both in population and settlement. But the proposals have remained on paper. If executed, it would mean each of the 11 districts gets a Nazir.

Another solution is to increase the strength of the staff. "For a police officer, it is not practical to travel from, say, Alipur or Ghazipur, to submit the goods. The cops are overworked as it is," says a police officer who has served Delhi as a district Nazir in the past.

For law enforcement, Delhi has 14 police districts and 187 police stations and each has a malkhana with 4-5 staffers. The number varies and in some cases, there could be fewer people or even a full staff. The numbers, though, are still not equal to the amount of work that pours in every day.