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Raging
against mainstream Hindi films for what he claims is
“unfavourable depiction of the police force’’ comes
naturally to the Mumbai police commissioner MN Singh. He is not
unsettled by the poor performance of his cadre, but is willing to
take up cudgels against anything that violates his self-imagined
picture of the upright, friendly policeman waiting to lend you his
helping hand. In fact, the Mumbaikar’s opinion about the force
policing the city is worse.
A
woman recently recounted an incident of a young girl who was being
felt up by a man while she was standing, waiting for the lift, in
her own building. When she screamed, the man ran. He shot through
the crowds and she followed him, screaming. She lost him just in
front of a police station. A policeman helpfully asked her if she
had been robbed. No, she had not. Then why pursue him, he asked.
This true story reflects the inert image of the Mumbai police –
at rest unless pushed to work.
A
social worker once narrated how she had to threaten the police to
register a case of child abuse, when a two-year-old kid was
admitted to the hospital with a bleeding rectum and cigarette butt
marks over his body. And the culprit was known.
Is
it desensitisation towards crime? Should Mumbaikars brace
themselves for this occupational hazard facing policemen when they
enter a police station? Or is it simple laziness? How many times
have you heard of policemen refusing to register cases, insisting
that it is not serious and making a mere NC report on it?
Non-registration
of cases
Joint
police commissioner Ahmad Javed thinks it is “unforgivable”.
“There can be no excuse for not registering a case. It is not
desensitisation. It is an attitudinal problem. The guy is just not
doing his job and he should be punished for it,” he says
emphatically. That though is an officer in uniform defending his
force before a newshound. But at the root of what could be one of
the most easily treated diseases of the city’s police force is
the symptom of a deeper malignancy.
“What
do you expect a policeman to do? He is told to register fewer
cases, because, in the end, it has to tally to show a fall in
crime rate,” says former police commissioner Satish Sahaney.
Every day in a year, the police commissionerate releases crime
rate data for the previous year. If there is a fall – and the
commissionerate will not release the data unless it is flattering
to them – this means the city’s police are working well.
“The police are judged by the crime rate. The less the
statistics, the better the police. Unless crime incidences are
delinked from measuring policing success in the city, this is what
you will get”, he says. As a result the reports present a
statistical absurdity. Consider this: in the year 1955, the
population of Mumbai was 50 lakhs. The crimes committed under the
IPC measured at 25,000. Today, in 2000, the population of the
seven islanded city is 1.4 crore. The crimes committed under the
IPC? Around 35,000! An increase of only 10,000 cases when the
population has gone up by around three times!
“My
contention is that no one knows the true incidence of crime in the
city. Nobody believes the registered numbers as being the true
figures. If indeed the actual figures were noted, it would be
staggering,” says Sahaney. Typically, Javed shrugs off this
theory. “Statistics is not an overriding concern, it is of some
value, but nobody has been asked to go easy on cases because of
piling numbers,” he says. Sheela Barse, noted human rights
activist and a regular lecturer at police training academies puts
it as desensitisation of the police force, helped in not a small
measure by the bureaucratic overload.
An
NC is preferred against a case registration because, among other
things, it consumes less ink; a tick and a sign on a slip. A case,
on the other hand, needs at least seven pages of documentation, it
needs investigation, production of evidence, production of the
accused before the magistrate and goes on till the charge sheet is
filed. Barse goes beyond this to point out that, in fact, the
police station could do with some reorganisation where work is
haphazard and multiplied. The same man, who is on VIP bandobast,
is multitasking –- picking up the phone, answering queries on
the line and then going out to pick up a dying beggar or driving
away cows or whistling to restore order in a slum quarrel. He is
the duty officer sitting in, making entries, and if a case comes
up, he hands over charge and goes to investigate. In fact,
reorganisation of the police stations is one of the demands placed
before the National Standing Committee on Police Training that
concluded last month.
“Of
course, cases are so many, that, yes, he has to work on many
fronts,” admits Javed. The city with its fabled streets of gold
brings its own frustrations to the police station. It has quarrels
over a water tap, a matrimonial fight that the police knows will
never go to the courts, it has its gaggle of politicians, now even
filmwallahs who have to be provided security cover, and
then its long and unending festivities that need a policeman to
forget home and hearth for 24 hours at a stretch. This will be
besides its underworld and rock solid crimes of murder and
passion.
Shortage of police force;
poor work conditions
Mumbai
depends on around 39,000 policemen and women for its safety and
security. A substantial number are in “non-productive” work
like guarding currency chests, providing security to personnel.
That squeezes its already overworked staff. “One of the
proposals put forward for a long time was to enlarge the legal
circle to give certain powers to security agencies, who could
perhaps help in handling small matters like in housing societies,
say, playing of the loudspeaker beyond the Supreme Court
deadline,” says Barse.
While
both Barse and Javed are emphatic that more police will not
necessarily mean better policing, Sahaney brings another feature
to it. “I’d rather not ask for more police unless there is a
proportionate recruitment of clerks for doing the necessary
paperwork for his salary, his medical facilities and residential
amenities,” says Sahaney. For, if the administration is expected
to provide motivation through housing, it has failed.
Most of its lower constabulary live in slums themselves,
cheek-by-jowl with antisocial elements. Even if they are housed in
the few police quarters built in the city, the buildings are ill
maintained, cracking up, leaking and flooded with sewage water.
There are no funds for their repairs.
“Housing
and medical facilities are indeed our main concern,” says Javed,
“and we know we have to do a lot towards it. We are working with
the government…”
A
police officer gets his weekly off which he gets to keep, unless
something untoward happens on a Sunday. Unfortunately, every
weekend, for the past few months, has been one of either a
festivity or an engagement and most of them have not stayed back
at home. During the Ganesh festivities, leave is cancelled and
duty hours go beyond the mandated twelve. “At any given point of
time, almost every police officer is working for 12 to 16
hours,” says Javed, “though we do try to give every constable
his weekly off and his off-duty hours”.
Till
recently, before the Fifth Pay Commission came into play, the
salaries of the constables were meagre. That has improved since
the commission intervened. Long thought to be the bane of the
police force and a reason for rampant corruption, poor salaries
can no longer be blamed for hafta collection. “Salaries
were never a reason for corruption, there can in fact be no
explanation for bribery and corruption. That is a state of
mind,” asserts Javed. Not many agree to such strong ideals, more
money is always a better security. Sahaney points out that even
now states like terrorism-stained Assam and Punjab pay a better
salary to their police rank and file.
Police
recruitment: are the best chosen?
There
are four entry points into the police force in Maharashtra, a
system whose expertise in choosing the right personnel is doubted
by its own practitioners. A man can join the police force as a
constable, or as a sub-inspector. Deputy Superintendant of Police
are chosen through the MPSC (Maharashtra Public Service
Commission) and at the top is the haloed IPS (Indian Police
Service). Sahaney, himself an IPS, feels the system falters in
choosing the right cop. He is quite candid about what drives a
young graduate to sit for the gruelling UPSC exams. “Everybody
wants to join the IAS or the IFS. Once you cannot get through the
top and find that you have been chosen for the IPS, you try to
give another exam to get better grades. Only when you fail again
do you take the IPS as your destiny,” he says. It is only five
per cent of the examinees who are sure of what services they want
to enter. The rest try their luck.
The
top bosses come to the force through a trial-and-error method, the
constables are required to be just eighth pass in school. Once in,
a constable has poor chances of promotion and knows that he is
going to retire, at most, as a head constable. Talk about low
motivation on the job. In this respect, too though, the
administration has relented now. “After five years as a
constable, he can take an exam, and, if successful, can be
appointed as a sub-inspector,” says Javed. Nonetheless, the
system of too many entry points itself can be a hindrance. In the
UK, for instance, every police officer starts as a foot constable
and rises, in many cases, to be a police chief.
“Right
now, if a police man is bad, that is about it. You cannot do
anything to him. You cannot fire him for inefficiency. He sticks
on and you have to bear him. At the most you can transfer him, but
he is still a part of the force,” rues Sahaney.
Transfer
him to the police-training academy. It is a sign of the high
opinion of police training that a posting here is considered to be
a punishment. Bad faculty, faulty techniques and poor training add
weight to the theories explaining bad policing.
Failing
in prosecution
As
if corruption and its inefficient image was not enough, Mumbai
police have had spectacularly bad innings with the courts
recently. Perhaps nothing invites greater wrath towards the police
than its failure to secure convictions in prosecution. JW
Singh’s case is one in point, where the prosecution was shown
the door on a technical lapse. Some of the other big ticket cases
where MN Singh had to wipe off egg from his face were the Gulshan
Kumar murder case where Nadeem was able to sue the police for
harassment, the Mohammad Afroze case -- the young boy allegedly
linked to the Al Qaida went on to become a minor star and the
police had to admit that it had no proof against him. Now Bharat
Shah’s case hangs in balance.
“Not
just these big cases, you have no idea how many of our NDPS
(Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances) Act cases lose
conviction because of technical flaws,” says Javed.
“It
is not just the Mumbai police, it is a countrywide malaise, even
the central bureau of investigation has dropping conviction
rates,” says Barse, “and this has not just to do with the
laws. It has to do with failing standards of evidence-gathering
and investigation. The main reason is the brutal politicisation of
the system. The poor policeman does not know what will happen if
he follows a case, who will come and mess it up for him. You reach
a point when proceeding with a case would mean upsetting either
the boss, the local hafta-giver or the politician”.
There
are two views on this. For the policeman, it is the laws dating
more than a century back which are the culprit. “For the
Englishman who set up the Indian police system after the
conflagration of 1857, the people of India were a colony which had
to be governed. The judicial system was in an accusatorial form,
where the police were constantly suspected and norms and evidences
were emphasised upon”. It is a system that takes care of the
accused – the famed maxim of ‘let a 100 accused go free but no
innocent shall be convicted’ at play; but there is no concern
for the victim.
What
has happened more than a hundred years later is that piling cases
in the judiciary have ensured that a case comes for hearing after
ten years. Which police inspector will remember the case details?
Will the papers survive the travails of time? Javed talks of muddemal
(the material seized from the person) during a raid or a theft
that should, ideally, be court property once a charge sheet is
filed. “But courts don’t have place to keep the muddemal,
so they rot in our rooms. If a case is to come up after ten years,
what evidence can these materials supply?” he asks.
“We
all know that a confession before the police is not accepted in
court. You will say it is because the police could extract so
under duress. You mean to say the police of US and UK don’t
torture their accused? So why not give the opponent a chance to
prove otherwise?” asks Javed, making a simultaneous plea to make
laws simpler for the people.
Barse
though strikes an opposing note. “Why is it that ten years back
the same laws gave better results in conviction than today?” she
asks, insisting that one needs a system of technicalities so that
the immense powers invested with the police are not misused.
No
prosecution support
Which
brings us to one of the worst kept secrets of the police force.
The Mumbai police have no prosecution department that will tell
them before a case is charge-sheeted about the chances of
success of the police in getting a conviction. There was a time,
recalls Javed, even ten years back, when he was a SP, that the
prosecution experts would sit with the police on a case and go
through the evidence and charge-sheet with a fine comb.
“Earlier,
prosecution was a part of the police department,” says Javed,
“at least there was a continuity and supervision of the
prosecution people. Today, nobody is accountable if a case fails.
When we were SPs, the evidence was looked into by experts before
the charge-sheet was filed. Today, all that a policeman does is
file his charge-sheet and wait for the prosecution to take it
up”. Under a
Supreme Court directive, all states were to set up a director
general (prosecution) for going through cases and advise
accordingly on chances or otherwise of an appeal.
Politicising
the police force.
It
starts from the recruitment. “There was a time,” says Barse,
“when a posting in Mumbai was considered to be a very senior
posting. You needed to collect experience in various stints
outside the city before making it. Today, officers with hardly two
years in the force get posted in Mumbai. Anybody who can pay gets
in”.
If
you do not bend to the wishes of the political bosses, there is
the threat of transfer. “Politicians want to use police as a
weapon, or as a facilitator for their illegal operations,” says
Sahaney. A simple instance would be carting truckloads of people
for a public meeting. “Carrying people in a truck is against the
Motor Vehicles Act, and the person doing so can be booked
immediately. It is a hazard to life. But which policeman can
prevent this from happening?”
Every
commission on reforms has proposed to delink politics from
policing, without being successful on how exactly this could be
followed in a democracy. One of the proposals is that a police
officer should have a fixed tenure, no matter what happens.
Sahaney moots a more local council responsibility. “If the
police were directly responsible to the people of a city, like in
the UK where the local counties pay for the policeman’s
services, it is easier for them to function. It also makes them
more conscious of public opinion. Here, they know that the police
force is under the supervision of the state government, so as long
as the political boss is happy, anything can go”, he adds.
Police-public
interface
Perhaps
the silver lining in the city’s police force is the successful
organisation of the mohalla committees, the only interface
almost institutionalised after the 1992-’93 riots. Taking people
from the locality, the police have succeeded in setting up a
veritable panel who can be called out during emergencies and who
rose to the occasion during the recent tensions in the city
following the Godhra incident.
“In
spite of all the shortcomings, Mumbai is still a safe city where
people, including women, can go out after dark without feeling
insecure”, says Javed. That is more a homage to the spirit of
the city than the police force, one could add. To make the force
truly responsive to the people will need more than polite-speak.
It needs a more aware community, vigilant voices and pressure
groups. “Wherever a community is assertive, the administration
has bowed to pressure. Mumbai police are sensitive to it, one
needs to keep up the pressure”, says Sahaney.
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