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Pawan, a lecturer at Saket Degree College in Faizabad, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, was marrying for the second time. The problem was that he had not bothered to divorce his first wife.
To make things more complicated, Pawan was a close relative of a member of the Legislative Assembly, Sher Bahadur, who came to the wedding along with an escort of armed men. Bahadur belonged to the ruling party of the state.
Things started to get out of control when Pawan's first wife arrived at the hall to protest her husband's second marriage. Before going there she had complained to the local police that her husband was getting married before divorcing her, which is a crime in India.
The police refused to take any action, however. They informed her that since Pawan was closely related to Bahadur, they could do nothing. Refusing to accept such an untenable excuse, the wife approached the district magistrate and the senior superintendent of police in Varanasi district. They also refused to intervene.
Once at the marriage hall, Mrs. Pawan was spotted by her husband, who started shouting at her. This of course drew the attention of local reporters who had come to cover the wedding, and who now tried to find out what was going on.
At this point the all-powerful legislator intervened. He ordered his armed men to attack the journalists. In the scuffle that followed two journalists, Garun Mishra and Nimesh Rai, were injured. While the reporters were being beaten some of their colleagues contacted the cantonment police by telephone and informed them about the incident. The police refused to intervene on the grounds that they did not want to register a case against a relative of the legislator.
The injured reporters and their colleagues immediately went to the cantonment police station to lodge a complaint. At the police station the officers not only refused to register the complaint, but rounded up the journalists inside the police compound. Then they were mercilessly assaulted by the Circle Inspector of Police Sansar Singh. During this assault, Mishra, Rai, Sameer, Jitendra Singh and Vidhu Shekhar -- all journalists working for local and national media -- were injured.
The next day a larger group of journalists gathered at the district headquarters in Katchery and started a sit-in protest against the actions of the legislator and the local police. Soon the police arrived and started beating the journalists, assaulting them with rifle butts. About a dozen journalists were injured in the incident. The police did not stop there, however. They also filed a case against the journalists.
It is common knowledge in India that many members of legislative assemblies and members of Parliament have criminal backgrounds. Recent estimates assess that well over 50 percent of the elected representatives -- both in the central Parliament and at various state legislatures -- have criminal records. Their offenses vary from armed robbery to rape and murder.
The law in India prohibits a criminal from running for election. However, this is limited to convicted criminals. Legal procedures can easily be manipulated so that most well-placed criminals get their cases adjourned indefinitely so they never go to trial. As long as one is not convicted, there is no prohibition from running for election or holding an official position.
The local police are the primary agency that is supposed to investigate crimes. The manner in which the cantonment police handled the case of the journalists speaks volumes about the nature of a police investigation in cases where the accused is an influential person.
The incident narrated above is not rare in India. It is common practice for elected representatives to misuse their office in various ways, of which the most common is bullying the state police. In a similar incident reported from Kerala state three weeks earlier, two state ministers of Cabinet rank rushed to the cantonment police station in Thiruvanandapuram city, the state capital, and threatened police officers there, demanding the release of a group of party-sponsored rowdies who were taken into custody for assaulting a woman police constable. The constable was assaulted when the police tried to stop the rowdies from destroying a shopping mall in the state capital.
These incidents raise several questions. First of all, what is the reason for an elected representative to keep armed private militia for protection? Is it because the state police are no good at providing protection? If so how can the same police protect ordinary people?
How can an elected representative have absolute control over state police? Of course the legislator, as the people's representative, might have a say in policing. But how can it be justified if such influence interferes with actual policing? Under what law in India can the police be policed by a legislator, or any politician for that matter? If there is no such law why do the state police have to oblige the legislators and other politicians?
It was this remote control that the Supreme Court of India sought to break through its judgment in the Prakash Singh case in 2006, which ordered central and state governments to comply with seven directives aimed at police reform. None of the court's orders in this case were implemented, however.
Yet another issue that raises concern, taking a cue from the above incidents, is who will police the police in India? Since the inception of police services, there has never been a credible authority with true and independent disciplinary control over the police. For anyone who is aggrieved with the police, there is no authority to which one could complain and expect credible and independent action within a reasonable time. Existing procedures, such as complaining to the court or to a superior police officer, never work.
Out of the 1.2 billion population, not even 1 percent are happy with the state of affairs of the local police in India. Even police officers are not. Prakash Singh, who approached the Supreme Court seeking orders to relieve officers from their invisible remote control by politicians, was himself a very senior police officer.
The end result is a thoroughly demoralized police force and a grossly dissatisfied population. This is reflected in various forms in public life. The police in India have now become a synonym for crime and corruption. The police are one of the most important government agencies, responsible for maintaining the rule of law, in any country and India is no exception. But for the time being Indians have to live with their corrupt and inept police. Or do they deserve something better?
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(Bijo Francis is a human rights lawyer currently working with the Asian Legal Resource Center in Hong Kong. He is responsible for the South Asia desk at the center. Mr. Francis has practiced law for more than a decade and holds an advanced master's degree in human rights law.)
