Pandemic brings image makeover for personnel in khaki

Geetanjali Gayatri

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 11

After the image of the Haryana Police took a beating in the 2016 Jat agitation for failing to deliver, the Covid crisis has brought a complete image makeover for the force as its personnel are going beyond the call of duty for the helpless public while ensuring adherence to government directions.

While doctors deal with the Covid challenge in hospitals, the police have easily become Covid warriors everywhere else — holding fort and standing in while coming to the rescue of the ailing and the deprived. This humane face of the police comes with a stern resolve too.

From clamping down on lockdown violators to slapping cases against the incorrigible, checking hate crime to booking those spreading fake news — the police are juggling a lot more than just maintaining law and order.

“Our brief to the field staff has been very clear — to chip in wherever possible and help whenever they can. The virus has blurred the usual duty boundaries. Those are for normal times. In this time of crisis, everything, including being supportive, sympathetic and thoughtful, is our job. Maintaining law and order, of course, remains priority,” explained Navdeep Singh Virk, ADGP (Law and Order).

A pregnant jhuggi-dweller in Gurugram was not only moved to the General Hospital for delivery in a PCR after she developed labour pains, but given food and medicines. A PCR vehicle dropped the mother and newborn back after they were discharged.

A resident of Prem Nagar in Yamunanagar sought police help after feeling uneasy at night. Since her only son was stuck in Gurugram due to the lockdown, responding to her call, the police admitted her to a hospital and called her relatives.

An 85-year-old woman lost her way in Narnaul and could not recall her address. The police made her comfortable by offering tea till they located her family. Similarly, in Bhiwani, a visually challenged mother with children was being continuously supplied meals by the local police to make life a little easier for her.

These were among the many incidents that had changed the way the public looked at the men in khaki. The police were performing an entire gamut of duties — distributing food packets and dry ration to the hungry, keeping tabs on bootleggers since liquor vends were closed, ensuring delivery of essentials and medicines for senior citizens, facilitating movement of vehicles to maintain supply chains, counselling suspected patients, keeping migrants in relief camps occupied, running a community kitchen to feed the hungry, and more.

“This has been an eye-opener that shows that the police have a humanitarian core. Exposure to weaker sections and difficulties of people has brought out the best in them. They are going to slums, unmindful of the danger of exposure which everyone is avoiding. They are counselling people during contact-tracing, persuading them to come to hospital and are an integral part of medical teams. This experience will change the police force. The gratitude of people will encourage them to give more. It will have a long-term effect on the police psyche and how they interact with the people,” said DGP Manoj Yadava.