The police debate

THE debate in the Punjab Legislative Council on the police grant covered the usual ground, with this difference that in the present year the non-official members put the popular point of view more fully and forcefully. Corruption and inefficiency are by no means the monopoly of the Police Department, but it is no exaggeration to say that they are more widely prevalent in this department than in any other. Another peculiar feature of the corruption that exists in this department is that while in other departments people give bribes in return for favours to which they are not legally entitled, in the case of the police, people are forced to offer illegal gratification to escape from oppression, tyranny or torture or in order to make the police properly perform their legal duties. A corrupt police official has got it in his power, by use of physical force or the threat of such force, which he can readily carry out, to extort illegal gratification from his victims. And the victim, even if he is bold enough to withstand the tactics of the corrupt official, is helpless because it is the police itself which must be employed to investigate the charges of corruption against police officials and more often than not the investigating officer is just as corrupt as the officer complained against. This being the state of affairs, we cannot but deplore the attitude taken up by the official members during the debate. Chaudhri Afzal Haq, who initiated the debate, had himself been a police officer. He brought forward a terrible indictment against the police and definitely asserted that there was a regular fund formed by police officers out of bribe money.