Giving police a free hand is dangerous

On September 14, several TV channels showed absolutely shocking visuals of the Bihar police chasing and beating women in a savage and sadistic manner just because they had the temerity to protest the misbehaviour of a police inspector with a woman.

The dozen or so police personnel were not deterred from exhibiting their beastly ferocity, even though they knew that TV teams were recording what was going on.

On September 5, as per the account of Mr David Devadas, a journalist, the J&K police punched and kicked him mercilessly and dragged him to the police station on a false charge of possessing a pistol, just because he expressed resentment over his vehicle being knocked by a police jeep from behind.

Some years ago, the Tamil Nadu police beat up respectable citizens having their morning walk in a park in Anna Nagar, a suburb of Chennai, on a flimsy pretext, and had to meekly apologise following a public outcry.

News reports of police brutalities in various parts of the country keep on figuring in both print and electronic media almost every day, without having any corrective impact on the police.

ACTION-TAKEN-REPORT

The British, having had experience of running a democracy for a thousand years, knew that any sharp weapon in the armoury of a state should not be allowed to decide by itself, when and where and how to strike.

That was why, when they ruled India, even though the police was in charge of members of their own race, they did not give it a free hand but subjected it to the supervision of Collectors and District Magistrates who also wrote the performance appraisals of senior police officials working under them.

They were enjoined to inspect at prescribed intervals all the police stations within their jurisdictions, inspect the case diaries of ongoing investigations, go into the efficacy of crime control and record their observations in the Inspection Book.

The SP and DIG were mandated to attend to these observations pronto and furnish an action-taken-report to the Collector.

Under the British, in times of disturbances of public order, a magistrate was required to be present on the spot and police could resort to lathi-charge or firing only on his orders and that too, only after he had duly warned the crowd and declared it to be an unlawful assembly.

In the period after Independence, with most Ministers at the States and the Centre not being well up in the whys and wherefores of the practices and procedures in administration, the police, in common with most other institutions, began wriggling out of the checks and controls that had served the British so well.

BEST PRACTICES

Out went the writing of performance appraisal of police officials by district collectors, regular formal inspection by them of the work at station levels, the requirement of acting on the orders of a magistrate during riots and disturbances of the peace, and all fear of an independent executive authority keeping an eye on them in the interest of the people. Indeed, the senior police functionaries were given magisterial powers to act on their own.

It is common sense that any organ of state with power over life, liberty and death, unless kept under strict supervision by an independent authority, is bound to become a Frankenstein monster.

An average police constable, without the needed background and upbringing that could temper his reflexes, begins throwing his weight about and becomes a feral beast the moment his conduct is legitimately questioned by a member of the public, going to any cruel extent — beating him up, foisting false cases — to teach him a lesson.

Even Central investigative and enforcement agencies are not free from these tendencies.

That is why there should be a provision in any police reform for independent checks and balances to watch over its mode of functioning, borrowing from the tested best practices from other democracies, side by side with intensive refresher courses for all levels at regular intervals on the imperative criteria of accountability, civilised dealings and spirit of public service.

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