A significant number of crime suspects being able to give the police the slip is another way of saying that impunity exists In legal justice, it is considered a greater offence to punish an innocent person than not to punish a guilty one. This means that innocent persons should never be punished for the crimes they have not committed. But failure to punish the guilty, without talking in this comparative sense, is also a serious crime as long as it is done knowingly. But failure to do so despite the best efforts to bring the guilty to book calls for an examination of the failure and adoption of corrective measures. Negligence comes in between. The country faces such a situation where 9,975 crime suspects are reported to have eluded arrest after committing crime in the past two years alone. If we add to this the figures for earlier years, and the failure to detect crime at all, which represents a significant number of crimes, possibly even exceeding the detected crime, and the failure to implement the convictions in a number of cases, the state of affairs will sound more alarming. According to the statistics of the Crime Investigation Department (CID), 29,996 suspects were arrested in the fiscal year 2014/15 and 33,247 in 2015/16 across the country. This marks an increase of 10.14 per cent. But in these two consecutive years, 4,985 and 4,690 crime suspects absconded. This accounts for 17 per cent of the crime suspects. The crimes include rape, attempted rape, banking offences, polygamy, citizenship-related offences, witchcraft accusation offences, unnatural sex, fraud, attempted murder, and drug smuggling. The incidence of these crimes is reported to have gone up whereas other crimes -- human trafficking, public offences, arms and ammunition offences, murder, cyber crime, forced abortion, kidnapping, robbery, and offences related to caste discrimination and untouchability, extortion, bombing and domestic violence – are reported to have decreased. The police records show the overall crime rate in the county has gone down by 1.76 per cent in the year 2015/16. In crime control only marginal progress has been registered but in the arrest of the suspects the situation is still very worrying. All this points to the existence of serious shortcomings in our criminal justice system and in the law-enforcement machinery, as well as in the coordination of the various agencies and officials concerned. A significant number of crime suspects being able to give the police the slip is another way of saying that impunity exists. The rule of law is the basis for peace and security in the country and for the flourishing of democracy and human rights and the vibrant enjoyment of fundamental rights by the citizens. And it should give those in power serious food for thought that the situation should be rectified, and this also calls for a sense of urgency to take effect corrective steps to reverse this trend. This in turn requires doing a lot of things more seriously, including giving more budget, promoting more technology-based policing, improving other aspects of criminal justice system, including the need to plug legal loopholes, and exacting greater accountability and transparency from all government agencies and officials, with greater punishment for their deliberate action or inaction which may help criminals. Giving a facelift Finally the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) is going to give a facelift to historic Ranipokhari after it successfully managed to relocate all fishes in it. The KMC, which has awarded Worldwide Kandel KNKG JV a contract to facelift the pond, has a plan to give it a new look with green cover, a musical foundation, walking trails, pavements, benches, resting places, gardens, open spaces play grounds and other entertainment facilities. The pond had never been cleaned for the last 400 years or so. The contractor will carry out the job of cleaning the pond while the Department of Archeology (DoA) will take up the responsibility of restoring the Balgopaleshwor Temple located in the middle of the pond. It was President Bidhya Bhandari who inaugurated the reconstruction work of the pond in January. But the reconstruction work of the historic pond has not kick-started yet due to row between the KMC and DoA over the use of the materials to be used at the time of its reconstruction and renovation. While it is necessary to reconstruct periphery of the pond using new materials its archaeological and historic texture should be kept intact as per the DoA prescription.