Crime Branch

About Us

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            Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) is in-charge of Crime Prevention, Detection and Investigation within Mumbai City. Various branches operate within the crime branch under their supervision. DCPs are the heads of those branches.

 

History of C.I.D. : Criminal Investigation Department

If the Bombay Police has earned the sobriquet 'Second to Scotland Yard', it's because of the excellent investigations of the Criminal Investigation Department.

Prior to 1884, there was no properly organized detective department. The government was not in favour of establishing a separate detective staff because it feared that it would lead to inter-departmental jealousy and conflict. But the police got around this block by setting up a detective branch that was part of the regular ranks. In 1890, permission was even granted to change the name of the Detective Branch to Criminal Investigation Department, although it remained part of the police force. The Tilak riots of 1908, in which the ineptness of the police intelligence gathering was laid bare, changed the mind of the government. S. M. Edwardes set up the Criminal Investigation Department (C.I.D.) on June 8, 1909. It replaced the old Detective Branch and functioned as an elite organization, placed under the control of an officer of the Imperial Police. He was given the rank of DCP - the first being F. A. M. H. Vincent - leaving the existing DCP to deal with the Divisional Police. The four main areas the C.I.D. worked on were political, foreign, crime and miscellaneous, each under an Inspector of Police. One of its main tasks was to look into cases of sensitive, political or religious nature, and this brief continues even today.