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FIFTH COLUMN
Commons' Problem
The
police is too busy protecting VIP's to look at the safety of ordinary
people
By
Tavleen
Singh
In
Tamil Nadu, one of India's most wanted men strolls into the home of a
movie star, abducts him and disappears into the jungle. In Kashmir, despite
all the talk of peace, militants attack an army camp outside Srinagar
and kill seven soldiers. They escape. In Assam in yet another blast 14
people are killed on a train. Nobody knows who did it. And in West Bengal,
desperate villagers, sure that the police will be able to do nothing,
take the law into their own hands and beat seven suspected dacoits to
death. All in the course of a day's work last week.
Because
Veerappan has suddenly reappeared from the jungles, we will have a few
days of fuss about law and order. Newspaper editors will write ponderous
articles, politicians will shriek and yell in Parliament and senior police
officers will leak stories about political interference destroying police
morale. And then Veerappan will stop being headlines and we will forget
once more that nothing has been done to improve police functioning since
the British left.
True, police
commissions have made weighty recommendations but they gather dust in
government offices. The only dramatic change in the past 50 years is that
more and more policemen, particularly the good ones, trade in their khaki
uniforms for more stylish black fatigues or grey safari suits and end
up as bodyguards to politicians. Instead of normal policing they then
concentrate on protecting the life of one man and his family. It's a much
easier task so the policemen are happy. And the politician is happy because
he feels safer than if he had to rely on ordinary policemen. The only
ones to suffer are we the people.
At a time
in my journalistic career when I had more to do with covering the activities
of terrorists than I mercifully do now I came under threat from a certain
terrorist group. The threat manifested itself in menacing, mysterious
telephone calls of the "you-will-die" and "we-know-where-you-live"
kind. The threats were serious enough for me to turn to the Union home
minister for help. This is what he had to say: "There really isn't
much we can do. If we give you a police bodyguard you will only draw more
attention to yourself so all I can suggest is that you take the normal
precautions and change the routes you take to work and keep a low profile."
The man who gave me this advice had a small army of commandos guarding
him and his office was filled with them. I tried to look pointedly in
their direction as we talked, but it was too subtle a gesture to make
any difference to the minister's elephant hide.
This is
only a small example of how, because they have built for themselves a
security system that is quite different from ours, our leaders care little
about what happens to us. So, even when we get a sincere home minister
like L.K. Advani, we see almost no improvement in the police.
Incredibly,
no attempt has been made, so far, to retrain our policemen to think of
themselves as representatives of the community rather than instruments
of a colonial government. A change of attitude is only the beginning.
After that, if ever we get a home minister who has the courage not to
wash his hands of the matter by hiding behind the excuse that law and
order is a state subject, he will realise the urgent need to modernise
our police. Not just through better equipment and transport but in terms
of modern methods of interrogation and investigation. As things stand,
to the police in India the word interrogation usually means torture and
investigation, almost nothing at all.
After the
Mumbai blasts, US detectives who had come to help the Indian police were
appalled to find footprints of policemen over the rubble that could have
yielded valuable clues. The investigation was so sloppy the courts released
many of the arrested and the vital Pakistani link remains unproved. Another
example of slipshod police work came from a small village in Maharashtra
where a Muslim family was arrested and tortured for months as the police
mistook plastic textile spools in its possession for rockets.
If you look
at the Home Ministry's attempt to give us another preventive detention
act in this context, it becomes a frightening prospect. K.P.S. Gill, to
whom credit must go for restoring peace in Punjab, strongly urges that
the law is necessary. Very, very necessary is what he said when I asked
him about it. He should know but why did it not help the governments of
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu catch Veerappan? If the brigand has powerful
political links, as is often hinted, why has it not helped catch the politicians
involved? Also, if the Home Ministry has time to make stringent new laws
that could be used against innocent citizens can it also find time to
teach the police a few 21st century methods?
Who knows
we might then be able to catch Dawood Ibrahim and maybe one day Vellupillai
Pirabhakaran, not to mention Veerappan.
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