It nearly happened one night

 

While we talk a lot about the valour of the Army personnel in the context of the supreme sacrifice, we do not realise how many cops die every year in the line of duty and how frequently they “look death in the eye.” To put things in perspective, 26,000 Army officers and personnel have laid down their lives in the line of duty since Independence. The figure for the Police was 35,780 till 2021. At the onset of COVID-19 when the world shut down, some services all over the world needed to be continued with added vigour. Policing was one of them. Over 3.54 lakh police officers and personnel in India were infected with COVID-19 till October 2021 and 2,548 died of the infection. This, not counting their family members who were exposed to COVID-19 due to the duty contingency of the cops. The long and short of it is that in the field policing phase (for some cops, the whole career), every day that a cop sets out for the day’s duty, he has a certain chance of not coming back alive or unhurt. 

For some reason, I was associated with a lot of firing incidents during that phase of my career. It started right when I was under training and attached to a Police station, Malbazar in Jalpaiguri district. Ours was a team of six accompanying forest personnel for seizing stolen timber. No one was arrested. The forest personnel found a lot of stolen timber in a labour colony in Damdim tea garden and were loading them on their vehicle when we were surrounded by a huge mob carrying bows and arrows (poisoned). Suddenly, there was a hail of stones, brickbats and arrows.  The guy standing next to me was hit on the head by a huge boulder and fell. Our training tells us to charge towards the source of attack. However, an arrow is a silent weapon and these criminals were such experts that they also could shoot the arrows with a curved trajectory making it difficult to gauge direction. Anyway, we opened fire and two of the miscreants fell to the firing.

 

At that time, I didn’t know that while the decision to open fire is taken in micro-seconds, the enquiry into it lasts years. At the close of the subsequent enquiry, after everything was discussed and enquired into threadbare, the final question was:

 

“So, was it not possible not to open fire?”

 

To which, I replied, “Yes Sir, it was possible, but then none of the Police team would’ve come back alive.” That enquiry was my real “baptism by fire.”

 

The luckiest thing happened to me during the post-Babri Masjid-incident riots. At that time, I was posted as Additional SP in South 24 Parganas which comprised certain areas in Calcutta which were badly affected. This was hair-raising duty day after day, night after night, seemingly without an end in sight. Several incidents of Police firing happened in the district but the violence and panic continued relentlessly. I think, around the third day, I was deployed to Tiljala Police Station and spent the whole day there dousing small and big fires, literally and figuratively. I returned home at around 10 PM and was having dinner when I received a call from the wife of one of my Dy SPs who was staying in the same colony. The Dy SP was deployed at another Police station area and had come back badly injured. His wife had called up in raw panic because he was having profuse, non-stop nose-bleed and she didn’t know what to do. We managed some doctors and treatment. The Dy SP apologised to me for getting out of action. Apologised!!

 

Just when I returned home after attending to the Dy SP, the phone rang to inform that Tiljala area was up in flames again. I rushed out with my driver and security guard. There is a train track at Gariahat, Calcutta which used to be the demarcating line between Calcutta Police and West Bengal Police jurisdiction. Just as I approached the railway line, I was stopped by some Calcutta Police personnel who told my driver not to proceed. As I have mentioned in an earlier blog, West Bengal Police and Calcutta Police are (sometimes adversarial) worlds apart. I got down from my vehicle, very annoyed and absolutely furious that they had dared to stop my vehicle. Then I realised it was under the orders of their Dy Commissioner who was standing close by. He had been my SP in South 24 Parganas and I was suddenly all deference. He fair shouted at me saying he himself was not able to go in there despite having a full platoon of force and how come I was rushing in with just two revolvers. He also showed me his cane shield which was completely tattered with only the frame left due to the attacks he faced when he made an attempt. As he was berating me, he received a message on his wireless that New Market area was burning so he had to rush off. Sensing that I might take off in my intended direction as soon as his back was turned, he instructed the SHO to surround me and not let me out until the Army column that he had requisitioned for arrived. I went in with the Army column when it came and saw that the situation was not as bad as my senior officer had portrayed; it was far worse.

 

A few days back, at a get-together of retired IPS officers in Kolkata, a very youthful looking person came and sat next to me. When we exchanged our names, I realised he was the same senior officer of that Gariahat night. He had forgotten the incident but I nudged his memory to tell him how I owed my life to him. Had it not been for him and had I proceeded six feet further, I would’ve been six feet under.

 

Somebody up there likes me.