Our police is beyond the pale

What is worse? Police flouting all mandatory procedures while arresting and gathering evidence, or the government lawyer, an officer of the court, asking judges to overlook this conduct?

What is worse? Policemen accompanying a lynch mob, or their seniors entrusting these very policemen with the investigation of the lynching?

These two examples, which took place five years apart, are from two different states, both ruled by different political parties. They prove, if at all further proof was required, that our police is beyond the pale. Neither the law, which it is  supposed to implement, nor justice, which cannot be achieved without it, matter to the police.

Two judgments that came over the last 10 days brought to light these examples. That justice could be done in both these cases despite such gross misconduct is a tribute to our judicial system, both to judges who never lost sight of the fundamentals of justice and to lawyers who fought through the fog that the police had enveloped these cases in.

It was under a Congress regime at the Centre and in Maharashtra that 90 per cent differently-abled Delhi University professor G N Saibaba, former journalist Prashant Rahi, JNU student Hem Mishra, and three tribals: Mahesh Tirki, Vijay Tirki and Pandu Narote, were arrested in 2013-2014, and charged under the anti-terror law UAPA with being Maoists, based on material seized from them.

On March 5, two judges of the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court acquitted all of them — Narote died in August 2022 while in custody. Their judgment is an account of police misconduct at every stage: from arrest to seizure and to evaluation of what constitutes ‘incriminating material’. The Maharashtra Police went beyond the normal corrupt practices indulged in by most police personnel everywhere. It didn’t just use stock panch witnesses, it even kept both Saibaba and the panch witnesses out of Saibaba’s house when the police searched it.

The Uttar Pradesh Police was not far behind. After two Muslims were lynched in Hapur over rumours of cow slaughter in 2018, the police walked alongside as the mob dragged their victims along the ground by their hands and legs, like dead cattle. When the video of this act went viral, the police pleaded lack of an ambulance and promised that the policemen would be suspended. But it went ahead and assigned one of those very policemen to the case, which it projected as road rage.

The ‘lapses’ didn’t stop there; the victims’ families were threatened; the survivor’s statement not taken…. It was only after the Supreme Court entrusted the investigation to a senior officer that things started falling into place. On March 12, 10 accused were sentenced to life. The judgment is historic not only because for the first time a lynching in the name of the cow has been seen deserving of such punishment, but also because Additional Sessions Judge Shweta Dixit has directed an inquiry into the lapses of the police and legal action against those responsible.

Will the UP government obey this directive? This is a state where the main accused in the killing of a police officer won a panchayat election, and the ruling party appointed another accused in the case as its zonal president. This case had to do with cow vigilantism too — Inspector Subodh Singh was lynched in 2018 while trying to control a mob who wanted immediate action against Muslims suspected of cow slaughter. In Maharashtra, then Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis felicitated the Investigative Officer handling Saibaba’s case; he was even promoted.

Why then should the police change its ways? As long as their political masters are pleased with their work, who will hold them accountable? Cases filed against policemen, mostly on directions of the court, and that too after victims have petitioned it, go on for decades. It took 31 years for policemen in Punjab and UP to be convicted for a fake encounter of three Sikh youth, and the gunning down of 43 innocent Muslims in cold blood in Hashimpura, respectively.

In Mumbai, it’s been more than 31 years; policemen indicted by the Srirkishna Commission for their deeds in the 1992-1993 Mumbai riots have yet to be punished, despite some of them having been charged with murder. In 2020, the Maharashtra government even reinstated cops facing trial for a custodial death, on the excuse of a lack of manpower during the Covid-19 lockdown.

The police is the repressive arm of the State. That’s how it was conceived of when the British ruled over us; that’s how it continues to behave after Independence. The new, ‘decolonised’ criminal laws that Home Minister Amit Shah waxes eloquent about only increase the powers of the police. No government is going to let go of its most potent weapon against the people.

(Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.