Policing in a civilized and democratic society has, at its core, a set of rules and regulations. This is materially different from the policing in a totalitarian state where it often borders on barbarity or brute force. The Supreme Court has made this clear, in terse and pithy words while rejecting an appeal by a set of Gujarat state policemen this week. The plea from these cops was against the state high court order sentencing them to 14 days’ jail in a communally sensitive case. The charge against them was that they tied some Muslim men to a pole in a public place and brutally cane-charged them over a complaint that they disturbed a Garba dance event in 2022.
The police action obviously drew wide media publicity and visuals of the police action numbed the senses of all well-meaning individuals. The errant cops were punished by the high court by citing contempt of court, as a previous Supreme Court order had laid down rules for the police force when it needed to act in similar situations. While rejecting the plea from the cops, the apex court of Justice BS Gawai expressed shock over the incident and termed the police action an atrocity, which deserved punishment. The very appeal against the high court order was unwarranted and only demonstrated, yet again, the arrogance of the state police force.
The Gujarat Police as a whole should have hanged their heads in shame for what some men in uniform from their ranks did. Instead, the attempt was to be ambivalent, irreverential and self-righteous. Gujarat Police had been at the centre of the epochal Gujarat riots of 2002, when it demonstrated both partiality and paralysis of the policing system with its alleged inaction and blatant support to the side that was pitted against the Muslims there and which unleashed violence on a hapless population and indulged in acts of rape and loot. This act was widely condemned by civilised nations.
Post 2002, Gujarat did not have communal riots. Across India too, communal tensions had reduced though the riots in Delhi during the final phase of the anti-Citizenship Registration stir and, worse, the recent communal conflagrations were major exceptions. These suggest that policing is not measuring up to society’s expectations. Police intelligence systems often failed to anticipate the threat to law and order. In many situations across states, police went beyond their brief and acted in a callous manner. It is well-known that the police force is being grossly misused by political parties in power to their advantage almost everywhere and get away with their act. It is therefore timely that the apex court has given a dressing down to the errant Gujarat cops yet again. It strengthens people’s trust in the judiciary and reinforces feelings of its impartiality.
