Police to remain unchanged

Police to remain unchanged

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=4&id=154656&usrsess=1

AMIYA K SAMANTA
The Dainik Statesman of 19/4/07 carries on the front page a photograph of a policeman beating a villager with a regulation cane, while a few of his comrades in uniform watch with evident glee.
After a careful look at the photograph, it appears that the man in uniform, whose star on the epaulette reveals his official rank as an assistant sub-inspector of police (ASI) is not really a policeman. He is wearing a full-sleeve shirt with a lanyard hanging from the wrong shoulder, while the rest of the policemen are in half-sleeve summer uniform. His hair is long beyond the permissible limit and his cap is not a regulation police headgear.
The newspaper has given out the identity of the “ASI” and has printed his photograph in civvies. He is reported to be a member of the youth front of the ruling party, and allegedly one of the ten fugitives arrested by officers of the CBI on 17 March from a nearby brick kiln, from where a huge cache of arms and a good number of police uniforms were also seized. It has been widely reported in the print and electronic media that the police action for political re-occupation of Nandigram was carried out by a combined force of regular police and political activists in police uniform and jointly commanded by police officers and local political leaders.
A noticeable trend in our democracy is that the constituencies of political support are not created by persuasion and appeal to people’s mind but by physical occupation of the area with the help of the muscle of the party, dutifully backed by the police. This may ensure electoral victory even in the most adverse circumstances, but it destroys democratic values in our polity.
This photograph reminds me of another one, which I saw in a book on the Third Reich. A gang of Storm Troopers (SS) of the Nazi party in Berlin was ransacking and setting fire to a bookshop selling socialist literature and a man, presumably the shop owner, was being ruthlessly belaboured, while a traffic constable and a large number of onlookers were watching in anguished silence. That was, in fact, a rehearsal for the forthcoming election in Germany in 1933, which the SS had won for Hitler.
Soon after Hitler’s ascendancy to supreme power, the SS, which had till then been the Nazi Party’s private security wing consisting of the most faithful followers of the party, was given the legal status as an indispensable organ of the Nazi State. In course of time, several branches like Gestapo, etc. were added, and their “exploits” are too well known to be recapitulated here.
The Nandigram photograph shows that the private army of the ruling party is in the process of being integrated with the state’s police force, which has been adequately suborned so as to accommodate the party’s armed cadres within its command structure. There is no reason to believe that the linkage is superficial, and it is confined to the outward similarity of dress alone. The reports that the local party bosses jointly led the police-cadre combine against the protesting villagers and the smile of approval of the comrades in the regular police force, as seen in the photograph, underscore that the relationship is rather visceral.
In this connection, it is relevant to note that the local SP has reportedly admitted that on the day of assault on the village two constables raped two women following perhaps the examples of their non-police allies who committed similar crimes in good number. As a result of long association and growing mutual inter-dependence, there has evidently been a superimposition of the party’s aims and objects on the duties and responsibilities of the police force. The sphere of the State and that of the ruling party are fast becoming co-terminus and identical.
This scenario is not unique; it is, in fact, emerging as an all-India pattern. More than five years ago in Gujarat, the police stood silently by when gruesome crimes were perpetrated on defenceless people by the activists of the ruling party. It has since been established that the police went into a stupor at the instance of the chief minister who had a political axe to grind. The police officers who refused to succumb to his dictates were punished, but unfortunately the number of such officer is just one or two.
So the police force’s loyalty and commitment to the law and the Constitution has been effectively subverted by the party in power, although the highest and the lowest in the police force have all taken oath to uphold the Constitution and the law.
To safeguard the interests of the ruling party vis-à-vis the opposition party, the police are used in two ways. First, the party’s muscle power is encouraged and patronised by taking little or no action when its activists break the law.
Secondly, to marginalise the influence of the opposition party, all the harshness of law and procedure is brought to bear on their members whenever they are suspected to have committed an unlawful act. On the whole, the police and their powers are used rampantly to gain and sustain political influence.
Consequently, the credibility of the police is now hitting the rock-bottom. Whenever there is a change of political regime, the former ruling party leaders are sure to face plethora of criminal cases, all of which may not be without substance. Some of the images like that of an octogenarian former chief minister being dragged out of his bed at dead of night by a group of policemen at the instance of the new CM still haunt the mind as a blatant example of the use of police for political vendetta.
Investigation into cases of various types of corruption involving political leaders have been monitored and modulated in such a manner as to derive maximum political advantage out of it. The CBI has not covered itself with glory in its handling of the Bofors case. If this be the fate of the well-publicised cases, one can well imagine the results of investigation of the huge number of cases arising out of political conflicts with the ruling party taking place all over the country every now and then.
In the context of growing extraneous influence on the police leading inexorably to the subversion of democracy and violation of human rights, the Supreme Court issued a seven-point directive last September for time-bound implementation by the Centre and state governments. But the state governments are resisting their implementation with the aid and assistance of a powerful bureaucracy.
The Soli Sorabji Committee has drafted a Police Act, which contains in a slightly modified form all the directives of the Supreme Court, at the behest of the Centre; but it has so far failed to persuade a single state government to opt for the new Police Act. The government in New Delhi has feet of clay, and as such it lacks the political will to press for crucial reforms. More with a view to appeasing political groups than out of conviction, the Prime Minister seems to have tried to browbeat the judiciary by making some unwholesome comments on judicial pronouncements. Such undesirable developments will cloud the visions of both the judiciary and the executive.
Only four states, namely Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh, have consented to abide by the directives. Sixteen states and Union Territories, which include Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, have condescended to partially follow the directives, but ten states and UTs, including West Bengal, Gujarat, UP, Maharastra, have stubbornly resisted implementation of any of the directives and have refused even to enact a law on the basis of the Draft Police Act. Significantly, though poles apart politically, both Gujarat and West Bengal have commonality of views on insulating the police from unwarranted interference. They put forward the untenable plea that the proposed “Security Commission” will undermine the power of the state government, though either the CM or the Home Minister will head the Commission. It is not understood how fixed tenure of officers like the DGP, SP and the OC will demoralise the officers.
And if the Police Establishment Board for transfer and posting of officers is a duplication of the existing system, then what is the ground for not opting for the Board? Any hint of impartiality and independence is detested by politicians and bureaucrats. Since corruption from the highest to the lowest levels of the force is used as a lever for control, it is contended that creation of a complaint authority to deal with police corruption will demoralise the force.
The morale of the whole story is that no political party will agree to change the British legacy of policing in India, as it is most advantageous. And in this regard the political parties on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, that is, those ruling Gujarat and West Bengal, have identical approach. On this issue they are consenting and comfortable bedfellows.

(The author was a member of the West Bengal Police Commission during 1996-2000)