THE police in Lucknow - the capital of the most populous Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which is claimed highly for its tameez and tehzeeb (super-refined etiquettes and culture) - torturs a woman and tries to molest her two teenaged daughters. There was no provocation and no complaint by the woman to have forced the cop to come to her house.
Over thousand miles away from Lucknow, the police in Lonavala town - close to the economic capital of India Mumbai - arrests over two dozen youths - who were celebrating the birthday party of one of their friends. No provocation again! There was no scuffle, no drunken brawl, no rape and no murder.
Both the incidences are strange. In the first one, this policeman simply walks into a house where this woman is alone with her two young daughters. He thrashes the woman, crushes her feet with his boots to the extent that she passes out. Then he tries to molest the teenagers who after much struggle lock themselves in a room to save themselves from this beast in khaki uniform. Not yet satisfied, the policeman flashes a stick at the woman in full public view, threatening her of dire consequences, when she after regaining concsiousness tries to fight back, and walks away.
In the other incident in Lonavala where a few youngsters were having a party with music and drinks, which is a normal activity in any civilised society, the police barges in and arrests over 27 boys and girls - all from good families. These youngsters are locked up at the police station along with hard core criminals. The police justification for the arrest is; the boys and girls were doing obscene activities and were having alcohol without licence.
In India drinks parties are common and no one requires a licence to serve liquor unless it is for commercial reasons. There are alcohol shops - selling both country made and exported liquor - at every nook and corner of each city, and there is no prohibition in force, barring a few states like Gujarat.
Now, the question arises as to what compels these policemen to behave in this derogatory manner with people - especially who are educated and who come from good social and economic backgrounds? Why the police is so rude to people - the tax payers - whose hard earned money goes towards the salaries of the whole force.
In Uttar Pradesh it is common to see lower level cops using insulting demeanor when they stop the traffic to clear the way for the entourage of the VVIPs (Very Very Important Persons). It is always a rude ``hep, hep, ruk ruk'' (hey you, stop, stop) or something more humiliating, which is difficult to be literally translated into queen's language.
One might wonder - if it is pressure, why the cops in the west are polite? They too have the pressure of ensuring security of their VVIPs, they too are supposed to maintain law and order. Then how they manage to be so calm and respectful towards the public and use words like ``please'', or address people with respectul prefixes like ``M'am'' or ``Sir'', even if they find the person violating the law.
Do the Indian policemen lack in etiquette training or they take out their frustration on public! The senior bosses of the police department seriously need to probe this issue and take it to a logical conclusion. They need to teach the lower rank officers to respect every citizen - if they want respect in return.
Another more grave issue, which emerges from these two recent situations - is whether the police force is there to check these petty matters and harass the comon public or they supposed to play a bigger role in the society maintain law and order and check big crimes, like murders, rapes, thefts, burgalaries etc. ``Five minors were raped in the state in 24 hours'' - this was a newspaper headline today. News like this put the whole country to shame.
In India it has become a general perception that ``a man can get away even with murder if he has the right connections or right money to grease the palm of law makers as well as its enforcers''.
Isn't it a time to change the perception of people? Isn't it a time to teach values like compassion, empathy and politeness to people in Khaki uniforms? Isn't already late enough to tell the cops to respect the public and also earn some respect for themselves?
Isn't it the need of the hour to chase the bigger fish of the criminal world - the Abu Salems, the Kasabs, the Mukhtar Ansaris or the Gaolis - Arun Gaoli and punish them for their deeds. This will not only set examples for other hard core criminals it would also earn some dignity to the men in Khaki as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment