State, party & police~I
Acting In Concert To Suppress Dissidence By Amiya K Samanta** 16 Mar 07 (http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2008-03-16&usrsess=1&clid=3&id=222147)
Several widely publicised incidents in recent months have exposed the state of policing in West Bengal. The force has handled public order problems as in Singur and Nandigram and the cases involve murder, mayhem, rape and arson. At another remove, it has come under a cloud over the death of Rizwanur Rahman. Thanks to media vigilance and a perceptive and protesting civil society, the people have come to know more about these incidents and the police response than is generally possible.
The official arrangements to honour the citizens' right to information in the shape of a press note or the tongue-in-cheek statement of a minister in a hurry or a hesitant civil servant's mono-syllable response, in fact, hide more than they reveal. But the media, within the limitations of the usual attitudinal constraints, have fully covered the gruesome incidents, overcoming the efforts by political activists to prevent them from being witness to the depredations whenever the truth was likely to be politically inconvenient.
This happened in Nandigram on 14 March 2007, when the media was not initially allowed, and again on 12 November when the area of operation was out of bounds for all and sundry. Still whatever has been reported and the images telecast are sufficient to make an objective assessment of the performance of two primary functions of the police ~ maintenance of public order and investigation of criminal cases.
The law permits the use of minimum force to disperse a violent crowd; but indiscriminate beatings of women and children after dragging them out of their huts, willful destruction of property in the courtyard, setting fire to haystacks were acts of aggression, which are plainly uncalled for excesses. In Nandigram, it was still worse. A huge police force was collected and the crowd, a sizeable section of which consisted of women and children, at a short distance was visibly unarmed. The Central Bureau of Investigation in its report to the High Court has reportedly found blatant inaccuracies and deliberate suppression of facts and figures by the local police on almost all counts starting from the number of rounds fired to the number of dead and injured. While the investigating agency has found no compelling situation to justify the opening of fire, the divisional commissioner holding the executive inquiry has reportedly justified the police firing.
It is not merely the ruling party suborning the police and the administration in an isolated political conflict; it is still worse than that. A number of television channels beamed images showing people, who do not belong to the force and yet donning the police uniform. With firearms in hand, they were chasing unarmed people. Some people in civilian clothes were seen leading the police.
These images demonstrate how effortlessly the state and the party functionaries can combine to suppress the dissidents. The attack on an unarmed procession in Nandigram on 12 November was launched by armed gangs mobilised and led by the leaders of the ruling party. This resulted in the death of as yet unknown number of people and widespread arson and destruction of houses. That the administration and the police were a party to the operation is evident from the shifting of the nearby police posts before the attack. When the chief minister owns the responsibility for the murderous assault launched by the activists of his party in Nandigram and justifies it as an act of just retaliation, his constitutional identity is subsumed by his political identity and the state merges in the party. This may appear to be undemocratic and unconstitutional to the intelligentsia but chief minister has given frank expression to the prevailing reality. The people of West Bengal know for certain that the party is the state.
Since important developments in the investigation of cases arising out of the incidents in Singur and Nandigram and the tragic and mysterious death of Rizwanur Rahman are now known from the orders of the High Court and the reports in the media, a critical assessment of the investigating capabilities of the police is possible. In the case of the murder of Tapasi Malik of Singur, the state CID took a totally wrong line and claimed the murder to be a case of suicide out of a failed love affair - a theory deliberately planted by the interested political group. The CBI investigation has, however, established that it was a conspiratorial murder, in which two local leaders of the ruling party and a few other accomplices have been charge-sheeted.
A couple of days after the Nandigram incidents of 14 March, the Calcutta High Court on a public interest litigation petition, ordered the CBI to inquire and report within seven days. In course of the investigation, the CBI arrested 10 party activists with a huge cache of arms, police uniforms and incriminating documents and handed them over to the local police as CBI was not investigating the cases but was merely inquiring on the orders of the High Court. The arrested activists were soon let off on bail.
The still more gruesome incidents of 12 November remain shrouded in mystery as the number of deaths and injured has not been ascertained. The graves, discovered at the initiative of the CRPF, continue to yield unidentified bodies.
As regards Rizwanur Rahman's death, Asoke Todi, father of Priyanka Todi and a multi-millionaire businessman of Kolkata, approached the commissioner of police for getting the inter-community marriage dissolved by coercion. The police intervened illegally and forced Priyanka to go back to her parents' home for about a week. She was not allowed to return or to communicate with her husband even after the stipulated week. Rizwanur's body was found by the side of the railway track. A case of unnatural death was registered at the railway police station. Neither the GRP nor the CID, to which the case was entrusted subsequently by the state government following a public outcry, registered any cognisable case, in spite of the existence of both oral and documentary evidence that at least four officers of Kolkata Police threatened Rizwanur in an effort to break up the marriage. After the loss of a month's time, the CBI took up the inquiry on the High Court's order, partially satisfying the public demand for justice.
The manner of handling the issues of public order and conducting the investigation of serious cases bring out without a shadow of doubt that the police is no longer an instrument of law but a tool to serve the interest of the ruling parties and the rich and powerful. The manner of maintaining public order characterises the nature of polity: an autocratic state will maintain public order by the rule of thumb and not by the rule of law, while in a liberal democracy public expression of dissent is not viewed as public disorder.
Any criticism or protest against an order established by the regime as against the democratic public order based on the rule of law, draws denunciations at regular intervals from the leaders high in the party hierarchy. Such threats and hate campaigns with the accusation of conspiracy, allegedly hatched in collusion with the so-called vested interests and the "imperialists" to create disorder with a view to destabilising the order of the regime. The accusations are vague and often imaginary; but a powerful propaganda machine can create a fearful image of doom and destruction out of the vagueness. There are examples from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Russia where such images were deftly etched in the minds of the people in a bid to perpetuate the totalitarian order. Threats are routinely translated into terrible acts of reprisal smothering all voices of dissent into a dumb anguish of fear.
State, party & police~II 17 Mar 07 (http://thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=3&theme=&usrsess=1&id=195598)
Intolerance of protest and dissent has far-reaching effects on the polity and society as well. Denigration of the institutions like the High Court and the Supreme Court that sustain democracy and the rule of law eventually weakens the democratic fabric.
In the context of increasing political and other extraneous interference in police investigation and in public order issues since 1950s in all the states of the country, various commissions, committees, civil society groups, responsible individuals have recommended that the role of the police should be redefined and the law enforcement apparatus should be modified to conform to the needs of human rights and democratic polity. Way back in 1959 the Kerala police commission observed, "the result of partisan interference is often reflected in lawless enforcement of laws". Such partisan enforcement of the law has been continuing unabated though the National Police Commission (1979-81) sought to remedy the situation by creating statutory institutions with the participation of civil society to ensure functional autonomy and streamline the police accountability system. Besides, it recommended separation of the investigation wing from public order duties, and fixed the tenure of officers in crucial positions.
NPC recommendations
The Law Commission (1996) also suggested such separation in the interest of better criminal justice administration. Then the Rebeiro Committee (1998-1999) and the Padmanabhaiah Committee (2002) were unanimous on the essentials of the NPC recommendations. The committee for Criminal Justice Reform (2003) headed by Justice Malimath also recommended separation of the investigation from the law and order wings and endorsed the recommendations of the NPC with regard to functional autonomy of the police and its accountability.
The Police Act Drafting Committee (PADC) headed by Soli Sorabjee former Attorney-General, drafted a model Police Act (2006 after consultations with civil society. The PADC has not disturbed the right of superintendence of the state governments over the police, though the right has been defined in clearer terms. It has, however, created high power bodies with well-defined roles to ensure police accountability and autonomous functioning in accordance with the law. The draft act also incorporates a well-thought out method of separating the public order wing from the investigation wing and security of tenure of officers in key positions.
The Administrative Reforms Commission headed by Veerappa Moily, in its report on "public order" (2007), has conceded that "once a person dons a political robe, he can control the police". The commission has recommended the creation of statutory bodies to safeguard the "Law and Order Police and the Crime Investigation Agency" from political and other extraneous influence.
The Supreme Court in the case of Vineet Narayan vs Union of India (1998) delinked the CBI from the direct control of the Centre and asked the state governments for early implementation of the recommendations of the NPC. But no state government paid heed to it and the Centre took four years to relinquish its direct control over the CBI. Once again the Supreme Court in September 2006 in response to a writ petition filed by Prakash Singh and another, ordered time-barred implementation of the seven-point directive ~ (i) constitution of the State Security Commission; (ii) procedure of selection and minimum tenure of DGP; (iii) tenure of other key positions; (iv) separation of investigation from law and order; (v) constitution of police establishment board; (vi) state and district complaint authority; (vii) constitution of a national security commission. Some of the state governments have only partially implemented the directives while a few others have made a mockery of the compliance.
The Supreme Court's primary objective to ensure functional autonomy, to make police accountability procedure transparent and to tone up the investigation by separating it from other duties have, therefore, been frustrated as the political dispensations consider such reforms detrimental to their self-interest. The majority of the state governments, including the one on West Bengal, have been resisting the idea of the State Security Commission or the State Police Board, the expression used in the draft police act, with the home minister as chairman and a High Court judge, the leader of the opposition and several eminent persons from civil society as members. The idea was to oversee police performance and ensure functional independence. Such a statutory arrangement will surely end the total control of the police by the ruling party. But it is likely to jeopardise the electoral prospects and other interests of the ruling party.
It has been claimed before the Supreme Court in sworn affidavits that political interference in police administration is minimal and that creation of an independent body to monitor police performance will undermine the authority of the elected government. When the home minister is the chairman of the Board/ Commission, how can it be contended that the state government's authority will be undermined? As regards the creation of "Police Complaint Authority" the state governments have pleaded that the proposed bodies will duplicate the existing state vigilance commissions, and will also demoralise the police. The complaint authority is expected to look into the entire area of omissions and commissions of the police, besides corruption. The state vigilance commissions are not statutory bodies but only government appointed bodies; although way back in 1964 the Santhanam Committee recommended autonomous, statutory vigilance commissions for each state, and in 1998 the Supreme Court directed the states to make vigilance commissions statutory bodies. But no state government has so far complied with it. These commissions are now avenues for patronage distribution, and the top jobs are carrots to the senior officers about to retire from service.
Partially implemented
Objections have been raised by the state on the issue of separation of investigation from the law and order functions on the plea of cost escalation. Given the fact that the criminal justice administration is on the verge of collapse, expenditure for such a measure is justified. The three other directives have been partially implemented by the state governments. It has condescended to select the DGP from a panel of four names prepared by the home department and not by the UPSC, as that would infringe upon the authority of the state. But the UPSC's selection is likely to be impartial and transparent, while the state government will invariably select a pliant person for the top slot.
Even with regard to the enactment of a new Police Act in place of the old one of 1861 vintage, the state government has been dragging its feet, although in an affidavit sworn before the Supreme Court on 2 January 2007, it stated that a committee had been set up to draft a new Police Act. Subsequently another affidavit dated 27 August 2007, states that a "high powered" committee under the home secretary has been drafting a new West Bengal Police Act and Kolkata Police Act. As a matter of fact, the act is being drafted in virtual secrecy, because even the other political parties of the ruling front, not to speak of the opposition parties have little inkling about it. Consultation with civil society, human right groups, and women's associations have been ruled out. In matters of police reform, consultation with civil society is imperative.
*A former Member of the West Bengal Police Commission and a former Director-General of Police, West Bengal.
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