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STATES:
WEST BENGAL
Licence
to Kill
Chief
Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya's call to the police to shoot without
worrying about human rights seems rather unnecessary-they do it anyway
By
Labonita
Ghosh
»When
the police found him, Khokon Modok's bloodied body was lying by the highway.
The 40-year-old resident of Nadia district in West Bengal was apparently
caught in a crossfire between policemen from the nearby Santipur outpost
and a group of robbers. Remnants of a bomb and a crude pipe-gun were found
near him. A month later, an investigation into Modok's death revealed
that the part-time weaver was not even on the spot. That, in fact, there
had not been a shootout at all. Modok had been whisked away from home
in a police jeep and shot at point-blank range. The encounter, it turned
out, was an elaborate frame-up.
»Toofan
Limbu was rushing home after a film one afternoon in Jalpaiguri when he
heard a gunshot behind him. As he ducked into a tea garden, the van with
the unknown assailants followed him around and pumped two bullets into
Limbu's back. He slumped forward and was lifted into the van. The next
day, his body washed up on the banks of the Teesta river, 10 km away from
the site. Limbu's "unknown assailants", it turned out, were
a forest officer and a constable. The policeman later said he thought
Limbu, all of 14 years old, was a wanted timber smuggler.
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"Use
those guns, shoot if you need to. I'll take care of human rights."
BUDDHDEV BHATTACHARYA
West Bengal Chief Minister |
Fake
encounters, stray bullets, mistaken identity. Does the West Bengal Police
really need another excuse to be trigger happy? That's what people are
asking Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya. On Christmas day, while
inaugurating two new police stations in the city, Bhattacharya, who is
also home and police minister, urged the police to "use those guns
that the Government has given you". Then he added a controversial
rider: "Shoot if you need to and don't worry about human rights.
I'll take care of that." Bhattacharya's message was a clear order
to the force to get tough with criminals. But the chief minister's legitimate
enough demand, by undermining the West Bengal Human Rights Commission
(WBHRC), seemed to give the police a license to kill. Calcuttans were
outraged.
Not everyone,
though. Residents of Bhattacharya's Jadavpur constituency welcomed the
order. In November, the Kasba-Jadavpur area witnessed back-to-back robberies,
a grisly murder and a rash of minor incidents. With crime in a tailspin,
Bhattacharya's announcement is seen as a much-needed shot in the arm for
the police force. "The WBHRC is no longer a human-rights body. It
has become a criminal-rights body," says a police official, who does
not want to be named. Indeed, over-vigilance-sometimes to the point of
being meddlesome-has been seen as a bad thing. Especially when it gives
offenders the chance to hold the police to ransom with threats of rights-abuse
litigation. A few months ago, a well-known miscreant tried to slash his
wrists and frame the officer-in-charge in a torture case. Police officials
say they already have to watch out for departmental probes and inquiries;
they don't need another investigation. The result: the police is reined
in, while crime spirals out of hand. Unfortunately, an unflattering track
record makes it difficult for people to side with the police. "What's
to stop them from killing an innocent man in a simulated shootout, then
tucking a gun into his hand to prove he was armed?" asks Congress
MLA Saugata Roy. "And who decides which person is a criminal?"
Last week,
WBHRC members met to discuss the matter, but decided they wanted a first-hand
version of Bhattacharya's speech from videotapes. "We don't know
why he said it," says Chairman Justice Mukul Gopal Mukherji. "It
could be to activate the police force rather than incite violence. We've
sought a clarification." Bhattacharya's subsequent clarifications
("There's no harm in shooting armed criminals ... human rights is
for human beings only") doesn't make things any clearer. But both
sides take pains to show there's no anomaly in the chief minister's remarks.
The WBHRC claims the state Government till date has adopted 95 per cent
of all its recommendations, as opposed to a 60 per cent success rate for
the National Human Rights Commission.
But the
debate here is still about the fate of innocents. When people back an
open call to arms, they probably need to know two things: First, that
they are effectively putting their lives on line. And second, the police
aren't the crack team everyone would like them to be. Nothing illustrates
this better than an incident in Calcutta last year in which a constable,
trying to stop a fleeing truck, shot at its tyres but missed and instead
hit an innocent bystander. A part of the reason lies in the police's less-than-satisfactory
training conditions.
Target practice
is only a small part of training, but in light of the recent controversy,
it becomes significant. The 1,200 constables, 200 sub-inspectors and eight
DSPs who graduate from the Police Training Academy in Barrackpore every
year are all given some kind of fire arms. They are expected to use these
in at least one post-training, in-service shooting practice every two
years. In reality, they rarely get time. During training things are only
slightly better. At the Barrackpore academy, practice takes place on a
firing range where the only "moving target" is a hand-cranked
bulls-eye that rotates in one place. The school has recently acquired
a small-arms simulator, but it's of little use to constables and sub-inspectors
who usually carry four-decade-old .303 rifles. Officers who run the academy
have petitioned the Government for improvements. But they're not expecting
miracles from a state that spends a paltry 0.06 per cent of its Rs 750
crore police budget on training and houses its trainees in shabby tin-roof
sheds.
Regardless
of skill, it's the split-second decision to use the gun in a tight situation
that makes all the difference. Police trainers hope that will come with
the 20-odd sensitisation classes organised ever year. Ironically, about
eight of these are conducted by the WBHRC itself. "If you want the
police to improve, give them the confidence to do the right thing,"
says a senior police officer referring to the effectiveness of recently
introduced psychological counselling, talks about legal rights and awareness
programmes. "It takes these morale-boosters to galvanise them into
action." And not just some hardline dictates from the top.
Top
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METRO TODAY
As
the Government brings in more people and mops more money in taxes, it
must be seen to be rewarding those who come forth and pay up, writes India
Today Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in 