The face of UP Police

Hathras Horror

Nothing much appears to have changed after the criminal laws were made more stringent to deal with crimes against women in the aftermath of the Nirbhaya incident. Nearly eight years later, one more precious life has been snuffed out by the predatory behaviour of yet another pack of males in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh.

First, the local police dubbed the 19-year old girl’s story “a drama” and refused to file an FIR. Then, the local administration labelled media reports of her family’s clamour for justice “fake news.” More recently, a senior police officer waved in front of the media, parts of a forensic report based on samples collected two weeks after the brutal incident, claiming that the girl was not sexually assaulted at all. This, despite her recording a statement about the fact of gangrape before a judicial magistrate, shortly before she died. The forcible cremation of the mortal remains, in the dead of night, denied the grieving family a last glimpse of “India”—the identity given her by Supreme Court Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy in a recently published scathing op-ed. Then, the cordoning off of the village where she lived, in the name of safeguarding law and order, made the UP Police’s motto – “surakhsa aap ki, sankalp hamara” (your safety, our commitment) -- sound deafeningly deceptive. Meanwhile, the local police are tight-lipped about the whereabouts of the four suspects who were arrested, albeit belatedly.

In April 2019, we got first-hand knowledge of the ‘law-abiding’ profile of the UP Police administration when we tried to ascertain their compliance with a decade-old law Parliament had enacted to regulate the power of the police to arrest crime suspects. Since 2010, every district Police Control Room (PCR) in the country is duty-bound under Section 41C of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973, to publish on its noticeboard details of every person arrested, within 24 hours. Every state Police Headquarters (PHQ) is also mandated to make this information accessible to the general public in the form of a database. Kerala Police were the first to implement this law. A few other states comply with this requirement. UP is not one of them.

We pursued UP Police twice -- first in 2012, and then in 2018 -- through RTI applications, seeking information about action taken to implement this law. In 2018, we escalated the matter to the UP Information Commission by filing an appeal against non-disclosure. Several months later, after receiving notice of a hearing in this case, we went on a whistle-stop tour of western, southern and central UP. We visited a PCR and one police station each at the district headquarters, to record an eyewitness account of statutory compliance.

Hathras was part of our tour itinerary. We found only two officers manning the PCR. Other officers had been deputed for election duty. Surprisingly, the PCR had preserved a copy of our RTI application transferred by the state PHQ, along with a reply that no information relating to compliance with Section 41C, CrPC, was available in their custody. The noticeboard meant for displaying details of arrestees was blank. Nobody had been arrested during the last 24 hours, we were told. We were advised to enquire with the police stations (PS) concerned whose personnel effected all arrests. Details would be on their noticeboards, we were assured.

So, we visited Kotwali Sadar PS in Hathras. Most of the personnel were on election duty here as well. A head constable who was manning the police station was not aware of any such noticeboard. Nor could we spot one. “I have been recently posted here,” was his excuse. He was more interested in inquiring about our caste identity. We claimed none.

The compliance status was no different in most other places. Of the 12 districts we visited, arrestee data was published on the noticeboards of Agra, Kanpur and Etawah PCRs only. The Operations Commander of the PCR at Lucknow -- UP’s capital city -- had not even heard of this transparency requirement.

We submitted our findings in writing to the Information Commission, seeking issuance of binding directions to UP Police to start publishing details of all arrestees as per Section 41C, CrPC. Eight months later, the State Chief Information Commissioner closed the case ruling that all information had already been provided and advised us to approach the concerned PS if we wanted arrestee-specific information. We had never sought such information in the first place!

A similar exercise in neighbouring Uttarakhand yielded positive results. The state police initiated action to comply with Section 41C, CrPC, soon after we submitted the RTI application. The Uttarakhand Information Commission appreciated the gravitas of the matter when we moved them over non-compliance. The commission issued a binding direction to the police, recognising that transparency was an important safeguard against the abuse of their powers to arrest people. Meanwhile, UP has turned a Nelson’s eye to such accountability-enforcing provisions, repeatedly.

Successive state governments have claimed that they wanted to make Uttar Pradesh, “Uttam Pradesh”. Meanwhile, the rule of law has taken beating after beating, be it attacks on Dalits and religious minorities or the numerous incidents of crimes against women or the gunning down of crime suspects without bringing them to justice -- the most notorious incidents being the killing of gangster Vikas Dubey and his accomplices three months ago. Misgovernance with impunity smothers justice and breeds trust deficit.

Interestingly, in every UP police station we visited, we saw duty officers perched on a platform higher than the ground level where visitors stand to make inquiries or register their complaints -- an architectural iteration of unequal power relations between the police and the policed. Moreover, several police stations have a Hindu temple functioning within the compound, complete with a priest performing aarti twice daily. The police’s claims of unbiased performance of public duties becomes highly suspect under such circumstances. The path to justice for Dalits and other marginalised communities is not even paved with noble intentions.

Meanwhile, the Karnataka Police are yet to pull up their socks to make arrestee data transparent in the manner required by Section 41C, CrPC.

(Nayak and Chhibbar are associated with Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi)