Stop whining, start shining II

 

I wonder if any cop at the senior level realises how troublesome being a victim of a crime is. When I was in Sierra Leone, after the hectic elections were over (one of the rare African elections where the government changed without a bloodbath), some of us UN mentors and the Senior Police Advisor got together in our house (it was called the India House) for a celebratory do. It was a rollicking party and, after the guests left, we, the inmates, went off to sleep blissfully. One of us received a call at around 3 AM from the landlord, who stayed in an adjacent house, saying he feared there were some intruders in the house. Our friend woke up to find that most of the things in the drawing room and living room including the TV set, music system, etc. had been taken away by the robbers. He woke all of us up and we saw that there was an armed gang who had come in and some of them were standing guard with knives outside each of the bedroom in case any of us woke up or disturbed them. Some of the knives were left behind. Luckily, none of us woke up suddenly, else, there might have been bloodshed that night and I wouldn’t be around to pontificate. 

We lodged a complaint but, for a few days, every night, we used to go to bed fearful that we might be set upon during the night. It wasn’t a happy existence for those days, despite our being cops and the local cops visiting regularly and putting in an armed guard for the nights also. 

In India, just lodging a complaint is a Herculean task. A victim going to a police station is already under severe stress. Then, there is utter insensitivity at the Police station which treats him as the problem and a nuisance. The default option of the Police officer is to prove that the complaint is false. At the end of the experience, the complainant feels more like the accused than the victim. Then, there are those interminable summons to the Police station on the pretext of recording of statements, examination by supervising officers, and so on. 

If we take ourselves away from the colonial mindset and think of Policing as a service, what would we focus on? A victim of a crime is less interested in the detection than in someone promptly attending to his distress call or his complaint. Just the fact that people in uniform land up at the scene of crime and start investigation quickly reassures him and his neighbourhood. We should concentrate on that and on how to minimise the inconvenience to the victim. That would mean recording the complaint at the scene of crime and taking all other steps like recording the statements, seizures, examination of witnesses, identifications, etc. all in one go and at one place. One-stop policing, in a nutshell. 

A member in my IIMB alumni group once contacted me. He had started a high-end café and the business was picking up. There was a burglary in the café and he lodged a complaint. There was no peace for him thereafter. Every day, the Police station started summoning his key personnel so that the café came to a standstill. In his desperation, he approached the SHO for withdrawing/ closing the case but the demand for doing so was so extortionate that he was cursing his “misadventure” in lodging a police complaint in the first place. He contacted me in utter desperation and was most grateful just because I helped him in closing the case. Imagine! With this kind of extreme victimisation of the victim himself, what legitimacy can the Police have? Is there a way out? Yes, very much. All cases should be reviewed on a monthly basis and there should be no non-Special Report cases pending for more than three months. This is easy to achieve. In case a case has been closed due to lack of evidence, it can be revived later if fresh evidence is forthcoming. 

Every single day, we wake up to news that such and such person has been denied bail on flimsy grounds. Even though he was arrested on cooked-up charges. That is between the Courts and the arrested person. Police can’t so anything about it. What the Police can do is, avoid wrongful arrest. How? Penalise it. 

Unlike in the US and elsewhere, there is no penalty mandated for wrongful arrest in India and the police and the politicians have had a free pass to do a lot of reprehensible things for too long, taking advantage of this. The cop leadership can do it internally and mete out exemplary punishment. The SP or DCP knows when a wrongful arrest has happened. Instead of turning a blind eye to it or starting a Departmental Enquiry, he can arrest the offender and put him behind bars. In a Police lock-up. I did just that when I was SP so I know how extraordinarily effective that is, to restore public confidence in “the system.”

The long goodbye

 

It must have been extremely difficult and back-breaking. Raising five kids on a school teacher’s salary. Plus, the guests at our house would very often go up to 20 or more. Most of the way, there was no household help. Just the utensils to be washed and the cooking would be something. My Mom bore it all stoically. And, managed to be cheerful. Basically, she is as non-complaining as one can get. 

In her old age, I have wanted to make her as comfortable as possible and shifted to a new house primarily because there is a servant quarter there. Six months into the stay there, she complained of severe stomach disorder. She was not able to describe the symptoms accurately but looked like, the chief complaint was major gastric discomfort. The distress was so acute that she had to be admitted at Apollo, Kolkata. A whole battery of tests didn’t throw up anything significant. With the medications, when the symptoms eased, she was discharged. After returning home, again, the distress rebounded. Various doctors, gastro-enterologist, diabetologist, internal medicine specialist and so on were at their wit’s end. When I asked if any further investigation can be done, the doctors said everything had been tested for; the only thing left was a whole body PET-CT scan but that was not indicated. On my own, I got that too done and the results were normal. 

During all these rounds of doctors and hospitals, one doctor suggested gently that since organically nothing is being found, should I be thinking of a psychiatric consult? Since, as I mentioned earlier, she is very far from being the complaining kind, I didn’t put much store by that and even the doctor was not very convinced about the need. 

Slowly, she took to bed almost the whole day. She stopped all activities, even her Puja in the morning and evening. After some time, she almost stopped eating because of lack of appetite. In front of my eyes, she kept shrinking and withering away, with severe weight loss. After about six months from the onset of the symptoms I had exhausted all other possible doctors and, in desperation, consulted a psychiatrist. After hearing the details and checking the voluminous medical records, he was confident that it was a case of what is called Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). I didn’t share his confidence but tried out the medication (anti-depressant and anti-anxiety) that he prescribed. Lo and behold, the situation improved dramatically. By the second consult, the psychiatrist asked me stop all the medicines prescribed by gastro-enterology. 

Mom is back to her morning walks, pujas, meals, cooking and so on. 

I had read about mental health but never realised that it could have such severe physical manifestations. I am grateful to the psychiatrist’s confidence – probably that stemmed from the fact that his own father is also suffering from MDD. 

Mom has also been diagnosed with early dementia and that is scary. After reading about it, what I gather about dementia is, it is a shrinking of the brain or its capacity. It starts with forgetting things (my Mom’s current stage). If the disease progresses, the patient changes physically, forgets his near and dear ones. The patient can eventually become bedridden and not be able to eat or drink or talk. However, there is a chance that the disease doesn’t progress and I am hoping for that. 

Meanwhile, many things have needed to be recalibrated. For example, I see to it that Mom is never alone. Even when I have to travel, I ask for one of my siblings to come and stand guard or first travel with her to the sibling’s place and keep her there for the duration. When she goes for her walk, I accompany her and after bringing her back, go for my own walk and exercises. I am having to change the lock on the house door so that she can’t open it on her own and wander away. I have locked away all medicines in the house and certain eatables so that she doesn't accidentally overdose/overconsume. I came across a set of very good advice on how to behave around a dementia patient and am reproducing it here:

Dementia is called “the long goodbye.” I am hoping that goodbye never comes or even if it does, it is far away in the future. Meanwhile, I take each day as an adventure anew …

Stop whining, start shining

 

I guess this must be so in other departments. In Police, throughout my career, I kept hearing why the politicians and IAS officers wouldn’t let Police reforms happen so the Policing in India continues to be in a sorry state. Frankly, those big-ticket Police reforms as mandated by the Supreme Court are beyond our control but there are a plethora of reforms we should have done by now if we had not been enslaved by the colonial systems and mindset. 

It is entirely within the powers of the SP or DCP to make the process of registering an FIR easier and more transparent. What does it cost to just tell the officers to register each single complaint? Horrible proliferation in number of cases. Does it matter for promotion or posting? We think it does but it doesn’t. When I joined a district as SP, there was a ceremonial hand-over, a sort of passing the baton from the previous SP to me. All the SHOs of the Police Stations and their supervisors attended to witness. And assess the new incumbent, i.e., me! After the event, and after the predecessor left, I found the guys crowding around so I thought they expected some pearls of wisdom to issue forth from my lips. I scratched my head to come up with something and then told them, look, I don’t want any suppression or minimisation. Any complaint that comes should be registered and under the proper section of law. The expression on their collective face was a picture. Then I told them, all warranties must be arrested and that would be a primary focus during the monthly Crime Conference. Till date, I remember the consternation on their faces. 

Words have consequences. 

In the first month of my assuming charge, the number of dacoities in that small district was four. Compared to four dacoities in the entire previous year. I panicked. If I managed to hike that most heinous of crimes, dacoity, from 4 to 48 in a year, where would I be? I made bold to call the one who was above us all, the Director General & Inspector General of Police and told him. He was intrigued and asked why I was telling him such mundane things. I said there was a request: four dacoities were reported in the previous year, I’d “achieved” four in the first month – could he kindly consider only the detection rate and not the numbers, please? He was non-committal. Unfortunately, none of the four cases in the previous year had been detected; the four cases in my first month were not only detected but about 90 % of the property robbed was recovered. I tried telling the DGP but by then, these were mere statistics for him. Meanwhile, crimes against property declined in the district and I was kind of sitting pretty. 

What happens if you commit a crime and disappear? The cops try for a while and then submit a chargesheet showing you as absconder. The Magistrate then issues a warrant for your arrest.  This is sent to the same Police Station where the crime was committed. You become a warranty. Executing a warrant is the least of priorities for an SHO and it’s just a statistic. Every month, during the Crime Conference, the SP or DCP checks how many warrants were disposed off and how many new ones were received and whether, on balance, the SHO is ahead of the game. So, if a particular warrant is never executed/ disposed off, there’s practically no accountability and the criminal gets away scot-free ... 

I checked the number of warranties and it turned out to be 163. This looked like a low number. I collected the details from the Court records and the actual figure turned out to be 5,617. In the monthly reports, I submitted that figure to my higher-ups and, immediately, there was a query as to how I’d managed to increase the crimes so much within one month of my joining. I replied suitably and was rewarded with further scathing “queries.” Until I left the district, these queries and replies continued and for all I know, they may still be going on, 24 years hence. 

Be that as it may, I set about arresting these people in right earnest. 

I found an able partner-in-crime (actually, partner-in-crime-control) in a young officer who was under training in the district. He told me that he was examining the warrants at a Police Station but the moment he touched one particular warrant, everybody was shivering. It was in the name of one Haren Bishu (name changed). I enquired and found out that he was the right-hand man of the local big leader of the ruling party. When the Chief Minister came visiting, he drove the CM’s car. And so on. There were reportedly seven warrants against him. The courts had given scathing observations and orders regarding non-execution of the warrants. When the local leader met me the next day for something else, I told him about the warrants and asked him to get him to surrender. He hemmed and hawed and went away. Two days later, Haren Bishu was detained on a routine traffic offence and the SHO rang me up. I told him to immediately produce him in Court against the warrants. About an hour or two later, I went on a round of the town to check if there was any disturbance. I found all the shops closed and not a single person on the road in that bustling town. Concerned, I asked one shopkeeper (about to close his shop) as to what the problem was and why the roads were vacant. He said, everyone had gone to the Court to witness Haren Bishu’s arrest – it was such a huge event! It turned out there were actually not seven but 23 warrants pending against him, all for heinous crimes like murder, arson and so on. And, he had never been arrested. Next day onwards, there were queues of people waiting to surrender in the courts against their warrants. It made my life a little easier. 

These are small measures but can cause problems for the SP, generally in terms of transfers. I also saw some unseasonal transfers and attempts at transfers. “Lekin, itne badliyon ke baad bhi, hum nahi badle …” 

[Stop whining, start shining]