By M L Satyan
Bengaluru, June 28, 2020: I am doing this write-up with mixed feelings like shock, worry, sadness, fear, anger, anxiety, helplessness and hopelessness.
Of late we have been continuously disturbed by news about untimely deaths of migrant workers; judicial/police custodial deaths/murders of innocent people; accidental (road, train, air, poisonous gas leakage from chemical factories) deaths of common people; suicides of young students, farmers, priests, nuns, some high profile business people and film celebrities; honour killings of lovers; killings of the Indian soldiers; raping and killings of girls and women by rapists and murdering of unborn and newly born children through feticides and infanticides.
The list can be quite exhaustive. Let us introspect now.
When a child does a mistake, the major blame goes to the parents for their inadequate childcare.
When a school/college student commits a serious mistake, the teacher/professor, school/college management, peers and also the parents are blamed.
When a teacher/professor commits a serious blunder, the blame goes to the school and college management.
When the head of any institution/agency/company functions erratically, the whole institution/agency/company gets the blame and blacklisted.
When a member of a particular community makes a blunder, the whole community is blamed.
When one political party worker or leader is involved in any type of crime, the whole party gets the blame.
When priests and nuns involve in criminal/corrupt practices, the diocese or the religious congregation gets the blame affecting the church.
When the church leaders (bishops, archbishops, cardinal, pope) commit serious crimes, the whole church loses its credibility.
In the case of police atrocities, people generally tend to blame only the police who commit the brutality. Take the recent case of the father-son murder under the judicial custody at Sathankulam in Tamil Nadu.
The lawyers and social activists blamed the magistrate who remanded the accused without seeing them; the medical officer who gave a medical certificate without proper physical examination; the jailer who admitted the accused into the jail without following the usual procedure.
We clearly see a network – i.e. police-magistrate-doctor-jailer – in this ‘double murder’. Can we accuse only these four people? No. There is another power behind them.
A flashback: On December 6, 2019, a vast majority of the people in India was in a mood of jubilation when they heard about the police encounter in Hyderabad. India woke up to the news of four rape accused men being shot dead by a team of the Hyderabad police. To many the police action was “justice delivered.”
People were seen shouting slogans in praise of the Hyderabad police. Flowers were showered on police personnel. People were seen celebrating the police action in other parts of the country, including Delhi and Mumbai with firecrackers and sweets.
Yet this incident also raised concerns over the extrajudicial executions. Many were also deeply unsettled by the news and indeed, these developments left us with more questions than answers when it comes to crimes and the actions of the police. It is worth spelling out here why the encounter – an Indian phrase that usually refers to an extrajudicial killing – raises alarm rather than satisfaction about justice having been done.
There is another big reason to be doubtful of the police’s claims when it comes to extra-judicial killings and quick resolutions to high-profile crimes: hiding the police’s own failures.
Supporting the killing of alleged rapists and murders without due process meant letting the police become the judge, the jury and the executioner. It is well known that Indian police departments are often used as political or even personal tools by those in power. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, Chief Minister Adityanath has given his police departments a free hand to carry out encounters – leading to a huge number of alleged extrajudicial killings, with those killed by and large being poor Muslims.
Extrajudicial killings are disproportionately targeted at vulnerable communities and, as mentioned above, may involve innocent people being falsely framed. In cases of more high-profile accused, such as BJP politician Kuldeep Sengar, there was rarely any clamor for action. Indeed, in Sengar’s case, the authorities repeatedly refused to act and those making the accusation were instead punished.
The Tamil Nadu government has utterly failed to control the spread of Covid-19 in the state, especially in Chennai. Recently it has introduced lockdown in four districts. In utter desperation the government has given ‘freedom to the police to do whatever they want’ to ensure strict implementation of the lockdown.
During the first lockdown, a Muslim man in Madurai had opened the mutton shop. He was severely beaten by the police. On the next day he died. In Coimbatore small restaurants and push cart eateries were allowed till 9 pm. On June 17 the police came at 8 pm and attacked a push cart food vendor and scolded his wife. The vendor’s son intervened. He too was beaten up badly and taken to the police station.
There have been various voices raised against the unending police atrocities. Several human rights activists expressed their outrage and said the police cannot act like a mob lynch under any circumstance. The acts of brutalities are an attempt by authorities to distract people from the government’s failures to safeguard the lives of common people from the deadly coronavirus.
The Indian Police should feel ashamed of this crooked and dangerous strategy of taking law into their hands. The politicians also need to examine themselves as to why they are “misusing the police force for their selfish gains”. We need to admit openly the “utter failure” of the social, economic, religious, political, judiciary and administration systems in India. Obviously the state and central governments become the real culprits.
Justice Verma Committee report, in the aftermath of the 2012 gang-rape-murder in Delhi, pointed out: “the actual solution to India’s high level of crimes involves much more careful work covering everything from education to police reforms to awareness of domestic violence and even electoral reform.”
Is India ready for reformation?