Dubious enforcers of the law

Julio Ribeiro

IN February, Junaid and Nasir were burnt alive by cow vigilantes who suspected them of cattle smuggling. The leader of the cow vigilantes, Manu Manesar, enjoys a special status in Haryana. He is an active functionary of the Bajrang Dal, the unofficial storm-troopers of the Hindutva brigade; he was inducted into a government committee that ‘oversees’ the police’s enforcement of cow protection laws, or so it has been reported.

The public has lost faith in the system and blindly supports the shortcuts adopted by the police to redeem themselves.

Consequently, the distinction between the police in Haryana and the vigilantes is effectively blurred. The police, it appears, have been forced to unofficially induct the vigilantes into their ranks as enforcers of the laws on cow protection. This unofficial arrangement has introduced a big dose of danger to the rule of law in the state.

When the police allow a section of the citizens to enforce laws which the cops themselves are guilty of neglecting, the persons so empowered are tempted to misuse the so-called authority. In this case of Haryana, the vigilantes have gone even further. They punished the alleged smugglers by burning them to death. If those two men who met that grisly end had belonged to the majority community, there would have been protests. But the Muslim minority to which they belonged did not attract even an iota of attention.

I was the Police Commissioner of Mumbai from 1982 to 1985. Complaints of officers at police stations treating law-breaking Shiv Sainiks with kid gloves came to my ears. I inserted a para in the ‘police notice’ which went out daily to all units of the force, asking: “Who is in charge of the city’s streets? Is it the Mumbai City Police or the Shiv Sena?” Promptly, I received a phone call from the then Shiv Sena supremo, questioning my question to my own men! Since I never pulled any punches when dealing with Balasaheb Thackeray, I give him a truthful answer, adding for good measure that I, as Commissioner, and my senior inspectors in charge of 51 police stations henceforth would be the sole guardians of the city’s streets!

Police officers and men are trained to maintain order. They are employed by the government at the people’s expense to do that. Nobody who has not been recruited and trained for the purpose can be empowered to do the work assigned to the police.

The cops themselves often need to temper their enthusiasm and remain within the circumference of the law. During Navratri celebrations in Gujarat in 2022 in a small town under the jurisdiction of the Kheda district police, four young Muslim men accused of throwing stones on garba revellers were arrested and then publicly flogged in the town’s square.

Since the flogging was done openly and was obviously meant to assuage public anger against the miscreants, the police had to admit to their indiscretion when confronted in the court. The excuse advanced by the police was that the flogging was necessary to avoid a worse situation, namely communal riots.

I had watched the drama as enacted on television. I got the impression that the blows rained on the four men were restrained as would have happened if there was an understanding between those who were receiving the punishment and those who were administering it. Even so, the police were openly proclaiming that they had the power to punish which is strictly the domain of the judiciary. There is no law that allows the police to prosecute, judge and then administer punishment. These three roles are assigned to three arms of the criminal justice system.

The problem is that the investigation and prosecution arms of the system are mired in corruption and the legal arm prolongs trials of offenders through unnecessary adjournments. The public has lost hope and faith in the system and blindly supports the shortcuts adopted by the police to redeem themselves in the eyes of the people.

Yogi Adityanath has become a middle-class icon in Uttar Pradesh. His instructions to the police to eliminate criminals and his most recent initiative of the use of bulldozers to flatten their houses are obviously not sanctioned by law. But these measures have succeeded in curbing crime and keeping criminals in check. He has not calculated the downside, though. When those who have been empowered by the state’s highest authority to act beyond the confines of the law become addicted to the misuse of power, the state will have a surfeit of lawless policemen who will pose a threat to law-abiding citizens. There is nothing more dangerous than criminals in uniform.

Other BJP-ruled states (double-engine states, as our PM calls them) have adopted Yogi’s bulldozer as their own. Their police, too, will descend to the ranks of serial law-breakers. And if vigilantes are given the type of liberty Haryana has permitted, the country will be well on its way to the rule of the lawless.

In such circumstances, the judiciary is the only standing pillar of democracy left. Unfortunately, it has not hastened the dispensation of justice since it has not been able to discourage the adjournments demanded by members of the Bar at the drop of the proverbial hat. Surely, it can stop the floggings and killings by the police on the streets of our cities, even if such acts get public approval.

Even if the judiciary feels that in view of public support it should turn a blind eye to shortcuts adopted by policemen, at least the open defiance of the law by the use of bulldozers to flatten predominantly Muslim houses without the authority of a judicial pronouncement should be stopped before more liberties are taken by a rampaging executive.

The necessity of the executive resorting to shortcuts would not arise if the courts could dispense justice quicker. The process should be started in the courts themselves. Day-to-day hearing of heinous crime cases should be the norm instead of the adjournment-riddled system now prevalent. And there are a million cases that should not have been brought to the courts in the first place. Civil cases of minor import can be sent for arbitration in one fell swoop.

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