S.K. Sood

Besides being an important part of the criminal justice system, the police is the only visible symbol of the state’s authority to a common person to whom they can approach for help in times of need. But more often than not, the police have been found wanting in fulfilling their expectation.

“The police force is far from efficient, it is defective in training and organisation, it is inadequately supervised, it is generally regarded as corrupt and oppressive, and it has utterly failed to secure the confidence and cordial cooperation of the people,” said AHL Fraser, chairman of the Second Police Commission in his report in 1902.

Little appears to have changed since Fraser made the statement. The Police Act of 1861 still governs our police. The colonial mindset of the police and the distrust people had for it in British India continues to date as the Indian police continues to behave like a ruler’s force created by the British to control the natives so that they can continue to rule and enjoy at the expense of Indians. Only the rulers are now our own. Seventy five years of independence have failed to transform the police into a people’s police meant to serve them.

That the police needs urgent reforms is beyond doubt. But they are like a dead horse which everyone, be they politicians, police leadership (except for some honourable exceptions), and the elite of civil society, keep flogging. The politicians are happy to control and misuse the police to serve their political interests while most of the police leadership behaves like an active ally for their own parochial interests, such as a comfortable posting.

To be fair, many police leaders who do not compromise with their principles either opt for a posting outside the police system or are consigned to insignificant non-operational assignments. The rot that the system suffers from is clear from the fact that a training assignment is considered a punishment posting. Policemen feel side-lined by such assignments and special incentives have to be doled out to attract talent for this extremely important function. Policemen given this role mark their time in training institutions till being brought back into mainstream policing. The common people, too busy dealing with daily struggles of life to care for these reforms, prefer to remain away from the police unless absolutely inevitable.

Instant Justice

Massive delays in our criminal justice system and increasing communalisation of society has created a constituency within the civil society which has become admirers of bulldozer justice, encounters and encounter specialists so long it does not directly impact them personally. Votaries of such instant justice are fast on the rise and actively support atrocities by the police, especially if directed against the people of the minority community or the downtrodden.

Historically speaking, even the Indian state has encouraged such blatant violation of the law and constitutional rights. Instances of mass killings of Maoists in West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh can be sited, which have been documented by the Bhargava Commission and the Tarkunde Commission. Yet the guilty were never punished citing national interest. Similarly, death squads were raised in Punjab to control militancy and the perpetrators are eulogised as hero.

This state of affairs, if allowed to continue, will lead to absolute lawlessness and anarchy. It is therefore necessary to reform police functioning so that it truly becomes a service that it is meant to be. But reforming just the institution of the police is not adequate. Reforms have to simultaneously take place in the criminal justice system so that there is no incentive for the people and law-enforcing agencies to take law into their own hands.

The necessity for reforms in the police functioning has been discussed for many years without any meaningful progress being achieved. As many as eight reports were submitted by the National Police Commission (NPC) set up in 1979, including one on replacing the British Era Police Act of 1861 with a Model Police Act. Most of the re