Viral videos pitch Singhams against each other

The video showed Bharti walking from the second-floor staircase to his office in the old Commissionerate building, patting a waiting journalist on the shoulder and striding purposefully to his cabin. The accompanying audio was the title song of Rohit Shetty’s 2011 corny caper, Singham, about a devil-may-care super-cop

Mumbai: On January 5 this year, IPS officer Deven Bharti took charge of his new post as special commissioner of police, Mumbai city. Hours after he assumed office, he posted a tweet that sparked off a furious discussion.

Mumbai, Jan 05 (ANI): IPS officer Deven Bharti takes charge as the Special Commissioner of Police of Mumbai, on Thursday. (ANI Photo) (ANI)

“Mumbai Police is a team. There are no Singhams,” the cryptic tweet said. The corridors of the Mumbai police commissionerate compound buzzed all day with whispered debates till an Instagram video started doing the rounds.

The video showed Bharti walking from the second-floor staircase to his office in the old Commissionerate building, patting a waiting journalist on the shoulder and striding purposefully to his cabin. The accompanying audio was the title song of Rohit Shetty’s 2011 corny caper, Singham, about a devil-may-care super-cop. Suddenly, the context of Bharti’s tweet became crystal-clear.

The appointment of Bharti, who is back in executive policing after a two-year transfer—on account of unsavory allegations against him—was viewed by many as an interesting sideshow. Sparks were expected to fly between the DG-rank police commissioner Vivek Phansalkar and ADG-rank Bharti—and on account of this, there was reportedly much debate about where Bharti’s office would be located.

First, attempts were made to accommodate Bharti in a different space from that of Phansalkar. However, it was ultimately decided that the CP and Special CP would share the same floor in the old commissionerate building, and joint commissioner of police (law and order) Satyanarayan Chaudhary’s office was given to Bharti.

The video was thus saying it all. The victorious cop who vanquished his rivals.

Phansalkar also has his own Singham video. On December 17 last year, the day the Maha Vikas Aghadi held a massive protest march in Mumbai, his daughter got married. By the end of the day, a skillfully edited video of Phansalkar in his office, in full uniform, was circulated on WhatsApp, with the accompanying text lauding him for putting duty over his daughter’s wedding. The background music for this video, again, was a mash-up of the Singham title song.

While neither top cop has officially given his blessing to the videos, it is an open secret that both, like all IPS officers, have their own coterie of supporters. The irony is that this alleged effort at image-building by two of the force’s top officers is happening even as the image of the Mumbai police has hit rock-bottom thanks to a string of top policemen being mired in controversy. Even Bharti himself was transferred from the Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad when a spate of allegations, ranging from underworld connections to helping criminal elements, was made against him.

The blows to the Mumbai Police’s image only got worse from here on. In 2021, several cops, including the controversial encounter specialists Sachin Waze and his mentor, former cop Pradeep Sharma, were arrested by the National Investigation Agency for allegedly orchestrating a bomb scare at Antilla, the residence of industrialist Mukesh Ambani. A year later, former Mumbai Police commissioner Sanjay Pandey was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the alleged phone-tapping of National Stock Exchange employees.

The Mumbai Police’s internal PR machinery has not exactly been idle all this while. Over the course of the year, the police’s Twitter handle, which had earlier restricted itself to sharing memes and advisories, became more active, sharing stories of good work by its personnel and making serving officers speak on camera about good detections.

“We needed to make it known that a few bad eggs do not represent the entire force,” said a senior Mumbai police officer. “We have undertaken a lot of PR exercises in the last two years to ensure this.”

But perhaps there’s no PR like unofficial Singham PR.