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.”