Stop police!

A police personnel guilty of unleashing violence against members of the citizenry should be tried according to the law of the land. Those protecting these bad apples should be meted out more severe punishment.

This is at the risk of sounding like a stuck record: something must be done, urgently, to ensure that those entrusted with maintaining law and order are not allowed to be outside the purview of the law. That this is not the first time we have implored that serious steps be taken in this direction should not take away from the gravity of the problem. It is easy -- far too easy -- to read about reported police atrocities every week. This week, for instance, a woman in labour was beaten up by a woman police constable in Amritsar for being involved in a case of jewellery theft. The police action resulted in the death of the delivered baby. Not too far away in Ferozepur, a mob went on rampage after the custodial death of an alleged thief. These are hardly isolated cases that can be considered grave anomalies in an otherwise clean and ticking system. Police across the country seem to go about their business as a law unto themselves. That, in a democracy, cannot be allowed to continue.

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But the unsavoury fact of the matter is that it is allowed to continue. It is not enough for human rights groups alone to keep knocking on the doors of justice. Along with others, including the media, they can only bring such cases to the attention of the authorities. The usual ‘punishment’ meted out to heavy-handed or murdering police personnel is the ubiquitous ‘suspension’. As far as deterrence goes, a few weeks off duty is hardly something that will send out the message that unleashing violence in the name of the law is a crime. In any case, quite clearly it hasn’t. In fact, not only is there a lack of any disincentive for the police to display their thuggishness, there is also by default a system in place that covertly encourages such extra-judicial violence: the absence of accountability and action taken against the guilty. The law should be severe with people breaking the law by committing acts of violence and manslaughter; it must be doubly severe when these crimes are committed by those entrusted to crack down on such crimes.

It is not enough for committees to sit down and cogitate over how to tackle this menace. The way forward is very simple: a police personnel guilty of unleashing violence against members of the citizenry should be tried according to the law of the land. Those protecting these bad apples should be meted out more severe punishment. Killing or hurting people in the name of the law should stop being a frivolous matter as it is today.