Bibtex
Endnote
RIS
The killing of an executive by police constables in the dead of night on the streets of Lucknow has sparked outrage across the nation. Sensing the mood, police have registered a second FIR at the instance of the wife of the executive who was hit in the neck by a bullet that shattered the windscreen of the SUV he was driving. The perpetrators of the crime, the two patrolling constables who asked the executive to stop the vehicle and fired when he did not, are under arrest. They have been sacked, speedy work by a machinery that is usually slow to take such decisive action against one of their own. The political machinery has stepped in to contain the damage.
At one level, this is a straight case of an overbearing police force working as a law unto themselves, with little checks and balances in a State that has been known not for the best of policing standards. The attempt is to present the incident in this light, and in particular as a one-off excess that is being dealt with a heavy hand. As the Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya remarked: “The UP government is aggrieved, the party is aggrieved, the family is aggrieved. It is not right to raise questions against the entire police force.”
State forces are given vast powers and weapons because they have an onerous task to perform. Maintaining law & order is not an easy task. But their powers are circumscribed by an array of rules and regulations because the tools of keeping order are the very tools that can breed disorder far worse when organs of the State turn criminal.
This is one constable (and his one accomplice), one incident, one bullet fired and one death that should not have been. That is the story the State of Uttar Pradesh wants to portray. Anything else risks bringing into disrepute the rough and tough approach that has been presented as one of the achievements of the government of Yogi Adityanath. That approach has been already under fire from human rights activists and all those who care about the rule of law. But now it risks coming into disrepute from those who were aligned with the government, bought its story hook, line and sinker, and even applauded it, till the bullets which were being fired at “criminals” in the dead of the night came up against the “non-criminals” as well.
All those who might have thought that trade will blossom, peace will return, law & order will be maintained, as indeed the UP Chief Minister in his various statements has sought to suggest, by giving the police the license to kill and free run under the “encounter” Raj have not understood the nature of the beast. State forces are given vast powers and weapons because they have an onerous task to perform. Maintaining law & order is not an easy task. But their powers are circumscribed by an array of rules and regulations because the tools of keeping order are the very tools that can breed disorder far worse when organs of the State turn criminal.
This is what has happened in Uttar Pradesh. Repeated statements and messages from the very top, acquiesced in and even echoed by the police leadership, and the string of encounter killings, have a sent a message down the line that it is okay to bend the rule, play with it and violate it. In UP, the State not only tolerates but demands, encourages and supports such encounters. Shocking stories of what is going on in the name of “encounter” killings in Uttar Pradesh have come out time and again, along with unrepentant remarks that this is the way law & order will be delivered to the people.
These are the voices and messages that police down the line have internalised in Uttar Pradesh. The only way they can be interpreted is that police can kill and get away at the very least, and even possibly be rewarded. At the frontline of police stations and its ill-equipped station house officers and constabulary, with its mix of inefficiencies, corruption and a host of pressures, it results in criminal actions to deliver whatever is being asked for from above. It starts slowly, one case at a time, but soon becomes a language, a method and then Standard Operating Procedure, so much so that there is no fear and excesses become wild, into the open and there is not even a modicum of respect for the law, all in the name of following the law and respecting the law.
That is the collapse that results in violations of the kind we saw last week in Uttar Pradesh. It marks the police as a machine devoid of humanity, values and leadership, making it the worst job anyone can have. It turns the very idea of policing on its head. It kills the spirt of service, sacrifice and is far removed from the principles of truth, protection of the weak and respect for people, which should be at the heart of day to day policing.
At the frontline of police stations and its ill-equipped station house officers and constabulary, with its mix of inefficiencies, corruption and a host of pressures, it results in criminal actions to deliver whatever is being asked for from above. It starts slowly, one case at a time, but soon becomes a language, a method and then Standard Operating Procedure, so much so that there is no fear and excesses become wild, into the open and there is not even a modicum of respect for the law, all in the name of following the law and respecting the law.
Stories of encounter killings and how it is a downhill path and hits at the very idea of policing are so common today that it is surprising that police officers don’t speak aggressively against it. Even in a city like Mumbai, with its greater level of awareness, higher media presence and a police force that was regarded as the best in the country, encounters have eaten away the inner vitals of the organisation. There was a time in Mumbai when the collapse reached a peak, criminals were being bumped off and what resulted was the police being divided between into two gangs.
The Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police O P Singh has described the constables who killed the citizen last week as “rogues in uniform”. In an impassioned statement, he said: "No amount of apology will suffice for the loss of a precious life, heal the wounds of the devastated family. My heart goes out for the little daughters, wife and family members of the late Vivek Tiwari (who was killed by police). I share my grief with them." He went on: "We are determined to punish and wean out such rogues in uniform who (make us) hang our heads in shame. At the same time, we have also embarked on systematic reforms through behavioural training and humanisation of the force."
These are laudable goals. The DGP must stand by them and lead from the front in executing this approach. The only way to get this going is to have one clear message: There is a rule book and it applies to everyone -- to the citizens and the police who are meant to be the protectors and upholders of the rule book. That means the end of the “encounter” Raj and investigations into the string of encounters that have given UP a bad name, sullied its police and also bred what might be some indiscipline when the force is called to order. That could also be seen as the wife of one the arrested constables, herself in the police, reportedly created a scene when her killer husband was arrested.
(The writer is a journalist and a faculty member at SPJIMR. Views are personal)