Why Police are partisan

 

Why police are partisan

When they are beholden to those who transfer them, rule of law can’t be honoured

SELF-SERVING: Politicians will continue to misuse the police for their own ends.

Julio Ribeiro

A regular reader of my weekly column wrote to me as reproduced. ‘I read your articles every Saturday. But you have not commented on the biased performance of the Delhi Police that is losing respect in the eyes of knowledgeable people.’ The gentleman then listed four instances where the Delhi Police were found wanting: (1) masked men entered JNU and beat up students. Delhi’s police did not arrest them. (2) The police beat students reading in the library of Jamia Millia University. Instead of charging the miscreants, cases were registered against the students. (3) Masked men entered areas of NE Delhi and triggered riots there. No action was taken against Kapil Mishra who was the main instigator of violence, though double the number of Muslims than Hindus died; and (4) Tablighi Jamaat was allowed to hold its conference.

The reader needs to be reminded that in our land, the police should be answerable to the common citizens, like him. In truth, police leaders are only beholden to the ones who transfer them and appoint them. Many senior officers lobby with politicians for postings in return for doing their patron’s will. These patrons represent the party in power, which dictates how the police exercise the power vested in them by law. Actually, the police are bound by their oath to uphold the law and the Constitution, but in reality, they obey only the diktats of the party in power. This is the tragedy of our country and its police forces!

This subjugation of the rule of law to the rule of the party in power is the new imperative applicable to all states, irrespective of the party that rules at that moment of time. I am not going to denounce the current Police Commissioner of Delhi, because I know how very difficult it is to defy the wishes of a strong-willed minister in charge of the Home portfolio. The only alternative open to him is to ask for a transfer or to resign. Not many officers have the spine to do this or take a principled stand.

Tejinder Khanna was one of the finest IAS officers I knew. I served in Punjab when Tejinder, too, was a senior serving bureaucrat there. There were a few officers of total integrity, both in the IAS and IPS, in the Punjab cadre during my tenure there on deputation. Tejinder was one of them. He later went to Delhi as a Secretary in the Government of India. Post-retirement, he was appointed Lt Governor of our Capital city.

I kept in touch with him till a few years ago when age began telling on my agility. So, I was thrilled when I received an e-mail from him last month. I was happier still when I read his letter bemoaning ‘the nationwide loss of public confidence in the police as fair and impartial keepers of public order, as well as investigators of crimes, has assumed serious proportions. Police officers yielding to external pressures for survival or advancement reflect lack of firm independent judgement and moral commitment’.

I could not agree more. I wrote back to him in those very words. My own IPS batchmate, Govind Rajan, would meet up with me every time he visited Mumbai to visit his sons, one the then Governor of the Reserve Bank and the other a trusted member of Ratan Tata’s inner circle in Tata Sons. Govind Rajan had the same question to ask! What has happened to our new police leaders?

I hark back to my days in government. I served under Congress governments all through my 40 years, the last four in a non-police role. Two years I served under an Akali government in Punjab. I never experienced bullying by politicians. If one stood up to them and pointed out the rules and adhered to the truth when analysing facts, they came round. The BJP government of Vajpayee and Advani was no different, I learnt and observed. They did not ask officials to twist facts in order to achieve targets. But Modi and Amit Shah are different. I have served in Gujarat and have friends in the police and the administration, as well as among the common people. They do not like to be contradicted! They neither forget nor forgive. The officials work in an atmosphere of fear.

So, too, the Delhi Police. The new rulers have come with their minds made up. To retain power, they need to divide the electorate on religious lines. If the 80 per cent Hindus largely vote for their party on religious lines (only ‘left-wing liberals’ will vote against), Hindutva concerns can be addressed and the ‘Hindu rashtra’ proclaimed. To achieve this objective, Hinduism itself will have to be bypassed and Islamophobia practised with some violence thrown in.

SR Darapuri, a retired IGP with 32 years of service, has written of his experiences with the Yogi government. Darapuri was active in the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and people associated with it are categorised as leftists. He was picked up by the police and though he was in their physical (not legal) custody, he was shown to be involved in anti-CAA and anti-NRC riots and clapped with a demand of Rs 74 lakh in damages for a crime he could not have committed. It is worth reading his statement in an online paper called The Citizen.

Reverting to The Tribune reader who lamented that I had not condemned the Delhi Police, I want to tell him that such injustice can never be sufficiently condemned. But till the depoliticisation of the police forces in India is achieved, politicians will continue to misuse the police for their own partisan ends. As things stand today, depoliticisation will take ages to happen. It can happen only if and when the people of our land demand that the ‘rule of law’ be enforced impartially, both in letter and spirit.