The second bullet

This is unfortunate. For an officer working in the field, the terms of reference of the public debate surrounding this episode betray a profound ignorance or, at best, over-simplification of police work in general, especially of the legal, political and cultural milieu in which the police and all other security forces deployed on internal security duties operate. What is of deep concern to all conscientious police officers is that the prevailing mindset underplays the very real danger to the officers and their kith and kin, especially to those who are involved in the fight against everyday crime, organised or otherwise, and terrorist activities.

Contrary to our image of a peace-loving civilisation, the metros and moffussil India are straight out of The Heart of Darkness. To suggest that as cops we intentionally go out looking for people to kill obscures the grim reality that much of the work of men in khaki is not just a licence to kill but an invitation to be killed as well.

There is no arguing that in a legal sense every police encounter can be made to fit the definition of murder. After all, once a man has been hit by a bullet, shouldn’t we cease fire, offer him first-aid, rush him to the nearest hospital and then book him under the relevant sections of law? Accept this sensibility and the second bullet should never be fired. So why do we do it? For money, that we can’t spend without inviting media scrutiny or a vigilance inquiry, for glory, that is both fleeting and attracts dangerous attention, or for a misplaced sense of instant justice?

In a hard-hitting piece published last month, journalist Barkha Dutt pointed out that encounters of all types are not only morally and legally reprehensible but also “strategically disastrous” as they create a crisis of credibility for the police force. She goes on to compare the situation in India with the Abu Ghraib episode and America’s war on terror. Just goes to show that hyperbole and propaganda are no longer the monopoly of the state apparatus. They too have been successfully privatised.

Wake up and smell the coffee, Ms Dutt. You may find it hard to believe, but police encounters are not the cause, rather the symptom, of the disease of non-performance and utter lack of accountability that afflict all institutions of governance in modern India. In the absence of a credible witness protection programme, in the absence of basic infrastructure to initiate and conclude scientific investigations, in the absence of any real check on the rampant corruption in the lower judiciary, in the absence of competent legal assistance at the trial stage for the prosecution, it is not surprising that many policemen, without the lure of lucre or glory, choose to fire the second bullet. It is done in the vain hope that despite being a short-cut, legally and ethically, it will create an example for hardened criminals that will have a salutary effect on the lives of ordinary citizens. That it doesn’t is, of course, a strategic disaster but for reasons that Ms Dutt and other commentators choose to gloss over.

A pattern is being repeated here. Create the problem in the first place by undermining the institutions of governance. Charge the police and security forces with rescuing what is a hopeless situation. And when they do, with limited resources and support available to them, hang them. Punjab was the blueprint, Kashmir is a facsimile, and no doubt this model of civic helplessness followed by outrage can be repeated endlessly.

The Gujarat episode, in the details that are in the public domain, if true, without question represents a gross abuse of police authority that must be punished with the full force of law, but to use this as a peg to hang all the good work that has been done by police personnel across the country in the continuous fight against crime and terrorism, in the face of what in any civilised society would be considered as unacceptable constraints, is nothing less than an act of betrayal. A round of collective chest-beating about our police forces, without seriously addressing the shortcomings of infrastructure, resources and manpower that handicap the men and women charged with protecting our civil society, will ensure that the lessons of Gujarat are learnt and, as quickly, forgotten until the next time.

The writer is SSP, Haridwar