POLICING FOR THE NEW AGE

PRAVEEN KUMAR
To my father Shree R.D.Suvarna

Year of Publication: 1992

Policing For The New Age is a collection of
articles that analyses the status quo of Indian
policing in the nineties, in the light of the
changes that can be reasonably expected to
occur as we approach the twenty-first century.
An organised, efficient police force, beholden to
none and committed only to the preservation of
law and order and the well being of the society
it serves is a necessary concomitant to the
smooth functioning of the civilized order.
Reality presents quite another picture
altogether.

What has gone wrong and more importantly

what can be done to bring about a change in the
status quo is the book's theme, the leitmotif
that runs through its articles. At once
hard-hitting and scholarly as they are, they
reveal both the anguish and the unquenchable
hope of a man devoted to his calling and
articulate his conviction of the positive role it
can and must play in the life of our country.
 S.Mohan Bangalore

Chief Justice October 1,1991

FOREWORD

"Man is just a minute constituent of the monolith of police".

In a broad sense the term ‘Police' connotes the maintenance of law and order and
protection of the rights of the citizens. Specifically, it applies to the officers who are
charged with the duty of maintaining public order and enforcing law, including
prevention and detection of crime. There can be no civilized society without an
efficient police organisation. For a democracy to survive, the existence of a police
organisation committed to legal and social values is essential. The role to be played by
the police in a developing democratic country undergoing rapid social changes is
indeed very great. In a democratic society the police should be so organised as to be a
reliable instrument for the maintenance of order and suppression and prevention of
crime, while at the same time assuring that they exhibit restraint and sensibility to
citizens' rights.

In recent times the topic regarding politicalisation of the police organization has
become the subject matter of discussion. Though in a democracy the police might find
it difficult to completely dissociate themselves from politics and political influence, it
is very necessary for effective discharge of their duties that they should avoid political
involvements. It is high time that the persons wielding political power realise the great
harm that would be done to the society by using the police for political ends.

Of late, the police are required to deal with new types of crimes and
situations. The techniques to be adopted by the police are also undergoing
various changes. The priorities in the field of crime and investigation have also changed.
There is need for a study of the various changes that have taken place in the policing
field.

Mr. Praveen Kumar in this treatise has exhaustively dealt with various
aspects of policing with reference to the new challenges, new types of offences and new
techniques of investigation. His approach to the various topics is refreshingly sound. How
beautifully he has underlined the suppression of crime, remembering he who overlooks a
crime, encourages the commission of another. He has dealt with each subject in a
thorough and thoughtful manner. I am sure this book would be helpful not only to those
in the police organisation, but also to those who wish to have an insight about the
working of the police organisation, the challenges faced by the police and the new trends
in Ihe field of policing.

A police officer with a tough heart, to be a poet, is a matter of approbation.

As a poet he manifests humanism. That the same spirit is to be exhibited in
reforming the criminals is his theme here.

I wish Mr. Praveen Kumar all the best in his literary ventures. May he
succeed endlessly.

Bangalore
(S. MOHAN)
CHIEF JUSTICE
HIGH COURT OF KARNATAKA
 INTRODUCTION
This is a fascicle of nine essays, written between.the years 1987 and 1991
and deal with various aspects of Policing and Police Organisation. The essay on
"Social Justice And Law Enforcement" was written in late December 1990 for
presentation at a seminar at the National Police Academy in Hyderabad. In "Dowry
Death Cases And Their Investigation" which was written as a general guide for police
officers, the three primary aspects of investigation namely law, investigation procedure
and forensic interpretation of evidences are separately dealt with. Written in 1990, the
essay was intended as subject reading for the Corps of Detectives of Karnataka. And
"The World In The 21st Century" is actually two essays clubbed for this publication,
both written in 1990, as entries to an international competition sponsored by Keihanna
Interaction Plaza Inc. Kyoto, Japan and supported by National Land Agency of Japan,
the Kyoto, Osaka and Nara Profectural Governments. The ambit of the essay extends
beyond policing and its organisation in an attempt to envision conditions in the 21st
century as they might logically be assumed to develop from latter-day circumstance.
On the other hand, "Organisational And Administrative Challenges Before The Police
For The New Age" is more specific in scope and derives in part from my own
experiences. This and "Humanising The Police - The Role Of Its Leaders" arc of
earlier vintage, having been written in the latter half of 1987 as entries in riational-
level essay competitions held for police officers. "Humanising The Police - The Role
Of Its Leaders" is written in the context of a democratic setup such as ours, where the
inteneration of policing methods without sacrificing discipline and efficiency is
something that is of universal relevance. "Police Dogs For The New Age in
Kamataka" is an essay adapted from a study report prepared in 1989 for expansion and
modernization of the Dog Squad in the Kamataka Police Department. The essays
"Crime, Politics And The Police", "Internal Security - Challenges And Approach" and
"Indian Police At The Crossroads" were written as recently as August 91. "Crime,
Politics And The Police" is an in-depth scientific analysis of the present Indian Police
and its organisation in relation to the topical subjects of criminalisation of politics and
the politicisation of the police. "Internal Security - Challenges and Approach"
identifies the maladies of internal security operations in India and endeavours to find
remedies while the essay, 'Indian Police At The Crossroads' is an overall examination
of the police subculture in India in the post-independent era. The essay is based on
empirical evidence encountered during the last thirteen years of my service in the
police and its rational analysis. The scope of the essays are limited to analysis of the
causes of the maladies and the suggestion of remedies to prepare "Policing For The
New Age." Awareness of the malady itself is half the remedy. Ergo, if these essays
succeed in awakening police leadership from its frosted complacence by shocking its
sensibilities with the truth, the raison d' etre of the essays will be more than fulfilled.
The esperance is that these scientific works would be found useful and appreciated by
police professionals as well as by the public.

Though each essay addresses various issues confronting the police, the
 treatment of these problems can be neither said to be exhaustive nor conclusive: they
are only meant to provoke thinking. There are many other problems with special
reference to the Kamataka Police that require urgent solution.

If policing is to be effective in the years ahead, specialization is crucial. I

suggest three distinct police services with separate recruitment and training:

a)Regulatory Police or Uniformed Police in charge of law and order and other regulatory
duties; (b) Mainstay police in charge of crime investigation, crime prevention, security
and intelligence operation; (c) Social police in charge of prevention and investigation of
all social offences and implementation of social legislation. All three wings should have
their own individual organisations upto district level with independent Superintendents
and staff as required: functioning in tandem in much the same way as the army, navy and
airforce. At the apex could be a specially constituted body called the State Police
Authority with Police Chiefs of all three wings as members and the Chief Secretary of the
Government as its Chairman.

At present, the growth of the Police Department is not really much more
than a spasmodic reaction to various stimuli and lacks the benefit of an
integrated approach. As a result, a structural chorisis is evident which places
operational facilities, counterbalances and counterchecks in jeopardy. The
constitution of a permanent cell of organisation experts under the direct control of the
police chief to redefine Kamataka's Police Organisation is required to make it more
meaningful and need-based. This could help in streamlining the hierarchy by identifying
and eliminating redundant posts, rationalizing workloads and preventing their
duplication, redefining duties and procedures and thus the rights and responsibilities at
each level. In consequence, police functioning would be made more cost-effective and
efficient.

The annual assessment of men and officers in the police has become a
travesty of what it was originally meant to be. In no way, under the present
circumstances, does an ACR reflect an officers qualities or capabilities or lack thereof.
Any reliance on this clavis to mischief is sure to demoralise the force. It is my strong
conviction that the department would be far better off without this pernicious evaluation
process that encourages corruption and favouritism in the force. Though, it must be said
that the evils of the ACR are not inherent in the process itself, but stem rather from the
calibre of those who write them at various levels. What characterises the rite of the ACR
today is a distinct lack of objectivity: it has become a means to personal ends, a medium
for the advancement of individual interests and even settlement of personal scores.
Servility is its inevitable consequence and it would not be immoderate to say that,
eliminating the ACR altogether would be certainly a step towards commune bonum in the
police force.

The other suggestion I have in mind to make in regard to the Karnataka

Police is that the Karnataka State Police Officers who don't opt to join the IPS must have
the opportunity for promotion provided by reservation of a suitable percentage at the next
level. New rules would of course have to be prescribed for such promotion. Similarly, a
minimum percentage of the total number of district and other coveted posts must be
reserved for these officers. As the KSPS and IPS are two distinct services and nowhere is
it stated that the latter superates the former, equal opportunities should be given to
officers of both services. There would be no harm in allowing KSPS officers to grow in
the service of their induction if proper avenues for advancement are vouchsafed. They
would also feel more of a sense, of belonging in their own service rather than in an alien
service, where a degree of alienation is perhaps inevitable.

It is common experience that police officers on deputation land in jobs far

lower in rank than in their home departments. The tendency to only gradually upgrade
posts to facilitate promotion further complicates matters. Many posts generally held by
Deputy Commissioners in administrative service were held by DIGs and then by IGs in
the police department, with a consequent lowering of the prestige and dignity of the
ranks. Similarly, there are very high-ranking posts in the Kamataka Police with minor job
contents, ipso facto affecting the dignity of the ranks'. These matters require critical
review by organization experts to have a more balanced police setup in Kamataka.

The blame that no talent breeds and grows in the heath of the police setup
cannot be easily gainsaid. The Indian Police Service continues to be an
intellectually poor, unattractive, subsecive service in the spectrum of All India Services
with only misfits opting for the service. The constabulary which forms the bulk of the
service is largely constituted of people from the lower strata of society who are
psychologically handicapped to exercise their police powers against the more enlightened
people in society. The tendency to foul-up superior intellect and excellence is another
contributing factor for the atrophy of the police setup. The general reluctance to adopt
modern techniques of policing and management, the dogmatic approach to man-to-man
and public relations and the lack of psychological insight to human nature are other
factors responsible for the unfortunate state of affairs in the force. These problems can be
overcome only by capable police leadership at all levels. The organisation is bound to
experience a glissade until the trend of donkey-judging-and-riding-horse is put to an end
in the police setup and a semblance of objectivity, reasonableness and good judgement
touch the core of police administration. This and related issues with possible remedies are
discussed in this volume.

I remember with profound regard and love, Shobha, who provided me

strength and inspiration always. I have dedicated this work to my father,
Shri R.D. Suvarna. It is he and my mother Smt. B. Sarojini who made me
whatever I am. Without their encouragement, perhaps I would have never
ventured into literary pursuits. The ideas about the police in this volume
surfaced in the process of my exchanges with my wife, Smt. Jayashree. I am grateful
to her for this and her succinct support in spawning this work. My deep gratitude is
due to my brothers, Shri Nishith Kumar and Shri Sushir Kumar and sisters, Smt. Asha
N.R. and Smt. Pramodini Ganesh, without whose help and encouragement, this
volume would not have been a reality at all.
I thank the Hon'ble Mr. Justice S. Mohan, Chief Justice, High Court of
Kamataka, Bangalore (currently, a judge in the Supreme Court of India) for writing a
beautiful foreword to this book. His wise and good words brought honour to this work
and blessings, strength to me.

Bangalore - PRAVEEN KUMAR

22.2.1992
 CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

Crime, Politics And The Police

Indian Police In Crossroads

Humanising The Police

Organisational And Administrative Challenges Before

The Police For A New Age

Internal Security - Challenges And Approach

Social Justice And Law Enforcement

Dowry Death Cases And Their Investigation

Police Dogs For A New Age In Karnataka

The World In The 21st Century

ONE
ONE

CRIME, POLITICS AND THE POLICE

Crime, politics and the police are the three meiths of the vicious triangle within
which the future of democratic India and its free people is inexorably involuted.
Though wealthy industrial and commercial houses form the fourth dimension of
the unfortunate predicament, their techniques are as yet limited to manipulative
strategies to gain an increscent hold over political power by remote control in
pursuit of their professional interests and seld they jump on the indignity of
involving themselves with the vicious triangle of crime, politics and the police. It
is that their wealth flows to the spendthrift chests of the troika and operates as
catalyst in reducing the normal life of free citizens to a welter of uncertainties and
unending hardships. However, their anfractuosity in the process of atrophy is rather
distant and indirect unlike the trio of crime, politics and the police Politicians
protectcriminals from the grip of the law while criminals reciprocate by acting as
their henchmen in handling underground activities. The police goes officiously to
politicians en revanche for job protection and strikes an understanding with
criminals to ease personal financial interests. Thus works this nexus of vile
power-brokers, preying on innocent people, bloating itself on the blood of the
hapless masses.

Power and wealth

In a blinkered system like ours, where power and wealth are the ultimate virtues,
where power and wealth in themselves stimulate mutual growth to the exclusion of
all other dimensions of life, it is no wonder, the people of this poor country succumb
to the trappings of power and wealth at the cost of all virtues, values, pride, dignity
and human decency. In an increasingly competitive and complex world where every
day more mouths are added to share limited resources, where the principle of the
survival of the fittest operates to its immane logical end and where the basic needs
of survival and decency can be assured only with power and wealth, people
naturally go all out to ramp the ladder of power and wealth by whatever means and
cost. In the process, justice and morality become casualties and criminality raises
its ugly head as an instrument to achieve otherwise impossible objects. This is how
politics and crime knit together in the fabric of Indian public life.

Police and politics

The story of the police is somewhat different. As the catchpole of the nation's
administration, the police enjoys tremendous power over vast fields of human
activities with responsibilities to life and death of the hoi polloi as well as
dignitaries. In this sense, the police is the cutting edge of the state power and its
ultimate bearer. No power can be its own sans the police on its side as an executioner
 and loyal watch-dog. This is why, politicians felt the need for wooing police to their
side in their activities. The police of independent India has become an easy prey to
the power baits of smarter politicians by the reason of their failing strength of
character and talent. Their greed, unsound social background, lack of commitment
to good values and failure to comprehend police virtues in the right perspective
make them willing partners in whatever politicians do or intend to do. They refuse
to look beyond their political masters with their dispensations of job favours; and
so law, justice, righteousness, professional ethics, morality, decency, human dig-
nity, common good of people, national interests and even conscience, otherwise
common to any human being, have become invalid nonsense to them. The police,
sans sound character and personal integrity is no more than a country dog which is
what the Indian police has become in free India. The politicians, inebriated with
new power, smartly brought these weaklings to absolute submission and hold them
on a tight leash to be their personal watch dogs and personal gendarmes in requital
for favourable job placements, undue promotions and other largition from time to
time. Nothing is valued higher than this largess and its dispensers by the new police
of India. It is how the police was involuted in the conspiracy against decent public
life in India.

Police and crime

It was a hop and skip for the police from the plangent world of politics to the
mysterious world of crime and the underworld. The police became a weapon of
politicians to bring about the subjugation of the crime world to prise their resources
for the political ends. They thus made good use of the decreasing strength of
character of the police in forging a nexus between the police and criminals in
furtherance of their own telos. With a weak spine to hold itself and hapless in the
face of odds, the police is only too pleased to follow the footsteps of its political
masters as the cardinal principle of policing. In changed circumstances, discipline
and subordination which form the basic connecting link of the police hierarchy, lost
all their shades of meaning and are interpreted as dunny and blind subservience to
those who have power, seeking personal interests. And politicians easily led the
police to the despicable cul de sac of the nexus with criminals, the very people
whom both are supposed to control and bring to book for antisocial acil-'ities. With
politicians as the custodians of power en wrier to the hilt to support, the police
plunged lock, stock and barrel into the lucrative crime world; the consectaneous
wealth and comforts were in no way less sweet than the hard-earned money of
law-abiding society. This is how the nexus between the police and crime world was
established.

Dangerous nexus

The trio of manipulators is a dangerous force to reckon with, in the Indian

democratic situation. Cohered as a tight-knit power-block, they have permeated
into all conceivable facets of Indian public life with the sole intention of garnering
all the benefits and pilferages of the inefficient public administration, for sharing
 among themselves in line with the proverb that one who dines well in a whore's
house is wise. The tragedy here is that the vice is perpetrated by those whom the
public trust as their benefactors and protectors. The amoral side of this operation
does not seem to have affected either the police or politicians in any way and the
vile cabal against the Indian public goes on unabated. It seems that all actors in this
tragic drama think that Indian democracy is a free-for-all field to grab to the
maximum in a world where all look for themselves and only those who grab the
most survive. This approach is certain to undermine not only the democratic setup
of the nation, but also its very social fabric. The blame for this sad end should
squarely be borne by the ugly troika of politicians, criminals and the police.

Dilemma of Indian politics

Not that politics is all bad. It is, by definition, governance of state through
popular leadership. The malaise of the present Indian politics lies in its tilt to
popularity at the elimination of 'leadership' and more dangerously, 'popularity'
being made a serious business proposition to be attended to by spending hard cash as an
investment to earn returns in multiple proportions. How popularity can be
won by investment remains a mystery of the democracy. However, sine dubio,
popularity is won on the field pro rata to an investment in Indian situation. It is res
judicata that nothing means as much to the Indian electorate as the money and
power to prod them to cast their votes for a particular candidate. The history of
independent India makes it patent that honesty, patriotism, quality, service, excel-
lence and even charisma have become casualties vis a vis money and power on the
Indian election stage. In this situation, a vicious equation is formed wherein
political power is equated with electoral popularity, which in turn is equated with
money and power, which can be had only through political patronage. The vicious
circle has helped to create a block of manipulative extortionists as divided from the
passive common public. Politics too has its honest and patriotic people who are
committed to the commune bonum. But, sadly, they are caught in the grind of a
system which does not let them surface to prominence unless they come to terms
with it and adopt the venal proposition of winning elections to make money to win
the next election. Only those who correctly grasp the inner dynamics of this and
adapt to its mechanics can hope to make a headway. Others are bound to sink. When
the system itself made the election a venal mechanism, corrupt practices that rope
in criminals and police cannot remain far away from the scene.

Criminalisation of politics

Whom should we blame for this hapless position? Certainly not the politicians
or their auxiliaries like criminals and police who are unfortunate by-products of the
grind. They are created by the situation, arising from a system which is misfit to
(he people to whom it was devised. The blame lies either on the Indian people who
are impair to the democratic system evolved for them, because of their unen-
lightened and venal conscience which is so dim-witted that virtues like honesty,
service, patriotism, quality and excellence can make no dent on it at all; or it lies
 with the political system devised for them which failed to take their psychological
makeup into account and ipso facto led to the problem of maladjustment in national
life. Otherwise, how can we explain criminals and goondas winning elections with
impunity even while rioting and murders were committed at their behest on the eve
of elections itself. The fact is that the chance of winning an election often is pro
rata to the aura of a tough image built around the candidate. It is these people who
win elections and rule this country! It is these people whom the Indian electorate
prefers to invest with powers to safeguard their interests! Obviously, the Indian
electorate lacks the foresightedness and vision to understand the consequences of
its irresponsible decision. It is yet too immature to take decisions about the interests
of the nation and see how national interests are closely linked to its personal
interests. It is yet to broaden its perspective to include the life of the nation as an integral
part of its own. Long term and rational decisions are alien to its nature.
Immediate selfish interests and a parochial outlook continue to be the driving force
of all its actions and decisions, whether it be on the matters of national importance
or personal concern. In most parts of India, it is money, arrack, sari, threat, fear of
landlords or the blazening propaganda of a candidate that influence it to decide as
to whom to vote for. How can the avenir of this country be safe in the hands of such
an electorate and its elected leaders? How can an indifferent and irresponsible
electorate provide honest and efficient leadership to the nation? This weakness of
the electorate has ultimately left Indian politics in the heath of violence and
manipulative extortions, with the instruments meant to protect them mowing the
field. Saner elements in politics, who found survival difficile, have left the field,
giving way to the elements which are more suited to what is required in the field.
It is how politics has become a pit of junk from a class of dedicated and virtuous
leaders. The credibility which is the pith of any political life is the biggest casualty
in Indian politics. People are more and more disillusioned with the extant political
institutions and the percentage of the electorate that takes the trouble of going to
polling booths to cast votes is steadily decreasing from election to election. It is an
open secret that an election is an opening for a candidate to invest money to reap
wealth, comfort and power for the next five years. And how he reaps the wealth,
comfort and power again is not a mystery at all. It is corruption and misuse of public
money. If he is ambitious and intends to promote his career interests, there is no
way out in the existing system but to resort to pulling strings and pursuing other
more deadly methods, often with the active collusion of the officious criminals and
police.

Political murders

Political murders are common features these days in India. When a political
adversary grows to be an irritant, too serious for corn fort, he is seen to be eliminated.
No career politician wants to stain his name with a murder case and get his name
registered as a criminal in a police station. He does the work through his faithful
underworld henchmen whom he keeps in good humour always for being available
for such a need, by providing them political support and protection. For this, he
keeps the police at his side. This is easily done by intervening in police postings
 and helping to get early promotions for favoured ones.

Booth capturing

A candidate for an election may even resort to booth capturing through his
criminal aides to facilitate his victory. This operation requires thorough planning
and training of the men involved, apart from the willing cooperation of the police. An
attempt at booth-capturing can succeed only with the intrenchant nexus between
politicians, criminals and police for synergy.

Political patronage

The unhealthy nexus often leads to and facilitates other forms of crime. Cases
of rioting, assault, kidnap, rape and blackmail, involving the supporters or relatives
of politicians, criminals and police in furtherance of a political cabal are other usual
forms of crime that result from the vicious nexus. Often, criminals and police are
employed to create disturbances or inspire sensational crimes in furtherance of
political goals. The losses of life and property involved in the wily schemes seld
touch the conscience of either the politicians, the criminals or the police who are
responsible for these dastardly acts. The political patronage and the nexus with
police desensitize criminals to the process of law and justice; they are thus
emboldened to commit more daring and ruthless crimes that endanger the life and
property of the plebeians. The police, in its links with politicians on one hand and
with criminals on the other, is in its new avatar as the protector of vested interests
with no more commitment and passion for law and justice. It has become a
discredited force, a willing instrument of power-brokers in a ruthless and violent
cabal of power-games with no heart for the common man and the common cause.
This is the requital the Indian electorate gets for letting its political system putrefy
by its nonchalance and irresponsibility.

Politicisation of crime

The overworld is just the tip of the real, raw world. There are more things hidden
in this world than there are seen. This is soon realised by opportunist Indian
politicians who seize the first available instance to enlist the support of criminals
and underground operators for their nefarious designs. This in turn is a god-sent
benison for criminals to restore their lost credibility and social standing with the
help of their association with the custodians of power, apart from the security and
protection from the police that ensues from the association. They promptly grab
the opportunity to their advantage and show how useful they can be to politicians
in their career-promotion designs and wreaking of personal vendettas. The ex-
perience and professionalism of criminals is handy to politicians to execute their
nasty operations without attracting the stigma attached to them.

The vast army of criminals has become a ready resource to them for use
whenever need arises. This has given a sense of confidence and security to
 politicians, who are otherwise vulnerable in their highly uncertain, challenging and
competitive environment. Often politicians have so much relied on criminals that
the latter have became their most trusted lieutenants, even getting elected to legislature
houses with their help and blessings. There have been instances in India,
where prominent politicians have refused to disown their notorious criminal friends
in public even after reaching the vertex of their political career. This shows the
sway held by criminals over politicians in the Indian situation. It is a fact that no
syndicate of organised crime in small and big cities anywhere in the world can
survive even for a day without political patronage. Ergo, all syndicates of organised
crime and their menace are the direct outcome of the intrenchant nexus between
politicians and criminals, indeed with the police as bystanders.

Place of crime world

No criminal can take lightly the need for political patronage in running his crime
syndicate. Be they smuggling syndicates, gambling houses, narcotics dealers or
plain hoodlums, the only way to survive is to have comfortable political protection
at the right levels. The crime syndicates en revanche, pay a good percentage of
their criminal gain to the protectors. Thus, it is an arrangement to mutual advantage.
The crime world also provides hoodlums as volunteers to perform challenging tasks
during the election campaigns of their political patrons, apart from liberally financ-
ing these campaigns. How can a politician, after he gains power with the help of a
criminal, ever let down the criminal? This symbiosis of politicians and criminals
which has emerged from the extant Indian political system is the root cause of all
the complications discussed until now.

The very fact that politicians are prepared to risk their reputations rather than
distance themselves from the crime world, shows how highly the world of crime is
regarded by the politicians in their scheme of things. Politics and crime have
become the two faces of the same coin in the present state of affairs and a saying
goes that there cannot be politics without crime and no crime without politics. In
the present Indian situation, it is true that the lotus of politics can blossom only in
the offal of crime.

Importance of violence

The need for organised violence is so high on the priorities of the Indian politics
that all political parties have created youth and volunteer wings to accommodate
young hoodlums as a fighting and street-smart force to further the interests of the
political party in street-fights and gang wars. Those who stand out among the
recruits to these wings for their exemplary courage and toughness are provided with
fast promotional avenues to reach the top and the fact that a very high percentage
of ministers in Indian Governments are the fighters from this arena gives a glisk to
the high priority of violence and crime in the present Indian political setup.

Criminalisation of police
 It is an irony that politicians, whose patronage criminals sought to ease them
from the straints of the police, brought the latter closer to each other, building a
bridge between them. The understanding reached between criminals and the police
goes a long way in criminalising Indian public life and blunting the effectiveness
of the policing. Though the nexus between criminals and the police is not a new
phenomenon, that what was an exception once has become a rule now and what
was a rule once has become an exception. The criminals overawed the weak police
with their connections with powerful politicians on one hand and lured the police
with easy money and comfort on the other and thus tilted the balance to their
advantage from the mouse and cat disadvantage they once suffered not long ago.
Though criminals played their political cards with adroitness, their real target a tout
propos was easing themselves from the pressures of the police. This, they achieved
with little cost by deftly flaunting their political connections to a weak and
crumbling police. Criminals did business with officious police for huge grists to
their coffers of professional interests without giving away anything substantial in
return, save trifling throw aways. This itself, however, was an unimaginable
bonanza to the lowly police of all ranks who had never seen life with open eyes
outside their regimens.

Crime and Indian politics

If some are born criminals, some choose the path consciously and some others
are constrained to follow the path. While faulty financial and social policies forged
by unenlightened politicians are responsible for forcing several helpless people to
the path of criminality on the one hand, their opportunistic, politically-motivated
demarche more often drives sensitive people on the path of revolt to inclip the fold
of terrorism and violence. Naxalism, Sikh terrorism, the ULFA movement, Kash-
mir separatism, Hindu and Muslim militancy and even sympathy in India for the
LTIE cause are direct outcomes of the nonchalant political handling of the national
issues.

India has seen isolated political attempts in the past. to lure people out of the
clutches of the crime world and rehabilitate them; these, however form exceptions.
The famous Chambal experiment initiated by the late Sri. Jayaprakash Narayan had
some success in spite of discordant vibes raised by the machinations of certain
politicians in the area.

Political kidnapping

Political kidnapping is an international phenomenon that comminated the world

of diplomacy in excelsis in the 1970's. The menace trickled onto the Indian scene
though slowly, decisively in the 1980's. The realisation that political ends can be
easily met by the malengine of the kidnap-drama opened up an aboideau to the
terrorists who were acharne to meet per saltum their political telos. The increase
in terrorist activities in India, perchance, as an outcome of the suspected" balkanisa-
 tion of India" policy adopted by some foreign countries, made political kidnapping
an ubiquitous reality on the Indian political scene from the latter half of the 1980s.
The terrorists of Kashmir and Punjab set the tone in India which was picked up by
the People's War Group and the ULFAs in the 1990s. The inexperience of Indian
political leaders in tackling the problem complicated the matter. While most
countries around the world explicated a policy of stubborn refusal to yield to
kidnappers' demands under straints a tout prix the Indian leaders goofed by
displaying their weaknesses while people close to them were abducted, in yielding
to demands as a quid pro quo in releasing a large number of dangerous terrorists
who were arrested at huge cost and loss of lives. The situation has been further
complicated by adopting a policy of double standards in sacrificing the lives of
lesser mortals in some other cases. It is obviously sending a mauvais depeche to the
would-be terrorists that the closer the proximity of the kidnapped to a political
leader, the bigger is the chance of meeting their political ends.

The reclame attached to the kidnap-drama and the arousal of the public interest
in the developments that follow is another dimension of the political kidnapping
that brings an identification and gives an image to a terrorist outfit as nothing else
can. It has become the fashion to initiate a terrorist outfit with a kidnapping
operation. This chevisance in the inchoate drama proves the strength and resource-
fulness of the new outfit and its locus standi among such other outfits, in the way
that the murders committed by a recruit decides his place in the Mafia. The finesse
displayed in executing the operation to a successful end decides the future of the
organisation apart from the advantages of the ransom money and release of
compatriots. Interestingly, the first experiment of political kidnapping in the Indian
scene was conducted in a foreign country in the form of the egregious abduction
and killing of Mr. R.H. Mhatre, a junior diplomat in the Birmingham consulate in
the first week of February, 1984 by JKLF militants.

Political kidnapping and murder is tout court the most heinous crime that often
involves the cold-blooded murder of absolutely innocent people for political ends.
The mental agony and postliminary destruction involved to the maledict hostages
and their near and dear ones because of the misguided entrainement of a handful
of greenhorns naturally make kidnapping an infructuous political tool at the end.
The considerable fall in the incidences of political kidnapping on the international scene
of late is an indication of the increasing realisation of this fact. Crime scarcely
survives in the situations of haute politique like diplomacy and relations between
nations. High thinking by enlightened people functions as a catchpole to check the
criminal tendencies from being perpetuated. Political kidnapping on the Indian
scene is also bound to be a temporal phenomenon as seen other where in the world.

A disturbing trend in political kidnapping is the possibility of professional

criminals like smugglers and drug pedlars resorting to political kidnappings at the
hest of their illegal profession in the guise of political kidnappers. The accrescent
dependence of terrorists and professional criminals on each adds to the complexity.
This unhealthy situation is already true in India as it is in many other countries, a
 pernicious cohabitation that's a zotic commination to peaceful international order.

. The kidnapping of Romanian charge d' affaires in India, Liviu Radu on October
9, 1991 on his way to office by the Sikh militants is the first instance of a high
ranking foreign national of diplomatic corps being kidnapped by Indian militants
to meet domestic political goals. This succeeded, a series of similar kidnappings of
Indian and foreign officials by the People's War Group, the ULFA and the Kashmir
militants. The abduction of Mr. K-Doraiswamy, an aine director of the Indian Oil
Corporation by the JKLF militants and his postliminary release in exchange for
nine arrested Kashmir militants hit headlines in Indian newspapers by the reason
of the 'Stockholm syndrome' noticed in the hostage after his release. His empathy
with his captors and their cause and sympathetic references to Azad Kashmir,
liberation struggle, misguided boys etc. after his release rather than a degout to them
were explained in the language of the cooperative behaviour se defendendo of the
pusillanimous hostages of a bank robbery in Stockholm in 1973, and is indited in
psychology texts as "Stockholm syndrome". The tendency of a diffident hostage to
cooperate sans gene as the only dernier ressort and even aid his captors at the
damnurn of seity may well-nigh turn out to be a malengine in the hands of
resourceful criminals to force a change in political attitude in the symbiotic world
of the criminals and politicians. The salutary references of Mr. K. Doraiswamy to
his captors au serieux also throw light on the possibility of his being conducted
maestoso, non obstante his otherwhere political affiliations, ipso facto suggesting
that political criminals more than often are gens de bien of high principles and a
selfless goal to achieve. It is why these criminals come under a distinct class and
command furibund aficionado from specific sections of the society, it be Subha and
Sivarasan of the LTTE or Sukhadev Singh (Sukha) and Harjinder Singh Jinda of
the Sikh militants.

The Operation Rhino against the ULFA activists is a direct offshoot of a series
of kidnappings of Indian and foreign nationals and killing of some of them by the
ULFA militants in Assam. The People's War Group in Andhra Pradesh is going
progressively active in kidnapping government officials to bring the state govern-
ment on its knees. The government of Andhra Pradesh is yet to take the gauntlet by the
horns. The kidnap dramas excoriate criminals, politicians and the police to a
war of nerves and those who have steel nerves in them emerge successful in the
end. The political kidnappings are further complicating the welter created in the
Indian and international mise en scene by the rise of kidnappings for ransom sine
compe scere by misadventurous individuals or groups lucri causa. The sema of
kidnappings becoming the piece de resistance of organised crime as a means of
making a fast buck is already evident on the Indian scene as more and more reports
of businessmen, industrialists or their relatives and children being kidnapped for
ransom appear in newspapers in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Punjab, Delhi,
Calcutta, Bombay and even smaller places. Ascensive anfractuosity of egregious
mafia gangs in these operations is a pollent possibility. The relevance of the police
comes into the picture in their ingine to check these pernicious developments. The
triste reality is that the Indian Police has failed to rise to the occasion till now.
Police as a link

It can be categorically said that the business of crime cannot survive anywhere
if politicians and the police join hands to bring the crime world to heel as is expected
of them. Alas, it is not to be in a world of opportunist politicians and muticous,
weak police, both with an eye on the spoils of the crime world. The police, actually,
is the weak link in the troika of power-brokers. It is just a significant link between
the major players of the drama, namely politicians and criminals, and functions as
an instrument of politicians to bring criminals to their grip and to tighten the prise.
The role of the police as a law-enforcing agency and its consequential hold on
criminals makes it a handy instrument for politicians.

Politicisation of police

The police is imprimis an executioner and odd job boy of the government. This
image of police is effectively made use by politicians for all conceivable personal
and official purposes. While low-ranking police are put to use as body guards,
gunmen, messengers, watchmen and odd-job attenders, high-ranking police are put
to the travails of the same odd jobs in higher forms. It is a triste commentary on
the present police that while low-ranking police do the job as an unavoidable duty,
high-ranking officers compete and fight among themselves to get and attend to the
odd jobs of their political masters. This they do, even while they are fully aware
of the criminal antecedents and police histories of some of their benefactors. Where
is the passion of our police for law and justice, the fighting spirit against crime and
lawlessness that should be the cardinal professional emotions at all levels? It is just
that our police has no more commitment to justice and social cause and nothing
seems worth the effort, save career promotions and creature comforts.

Not that the police force is devised to be the personal handmaid of the
politicians. It is to be the ultimate power-bearer, the moving force of power on the
field. This necessitates discretion and exemplary personal dignity to be its primary
traits. It has to be a cornucopia of strength of caractere and probity and stand up
as a model to less fortunate people of the country. This beau ideal is also relegated
to oblivion in current Indian policing where all-out self-promotion by devious
methods is the norm.

Subservience in police

The present police, particularly at higher levels, condescends to any mean level,
even at the cost of personal pride, human decency, individual dignity, social
standing and professional ethics, just to get a pat from its political masters. There
are instances wherein police officers of higher rank exposed their careers and lives
to deadly risks by pursuing deviant methods to please politicians. The mishandling
of the Bangalore bandh on December 13,1991 wherein violence was let to spread
and intensify till it went out of control in the evening is a point in issue. These facts
 only make out apoint that a normal man, once he enters the police service, somehow
unconsciously assumes to role-play the canine nature and gives a go-by to human
instincts, conscience and such noble traits which are exclusive to the human animal.
The question is should the police be so? Is it imperative to shed human qualities
and assume canine instincts to join the police service? Is it true that policing can
be effective only with the canine instinct of blind loyalty and instinctive obedience,
deprived of all individuality, conscience and rational judgement? The answer is a
categorical 'no'. On the other hand, policing can be genuine policing only with the
strength of character, tempered with rational judgement and healthy exchange of
ideas at all levels.

Voice of reason is silenced

It is not as if all people who join the police are always weaklings. Saner elements
made up of stronger fibre too once in a way enter the police. However, numerically
superior leeway swimmers with their stronger positions, by courtesy of officious
politicians, strangle the reasonable voice of the enlightened few who enter the
service. If some among such a minority are found to be implacable and refuse to
be illaqueated, they are easily crippled by murky malengines that bring mayhem
on their career prospects. The police displays an extraordinary unity of purpose in
executing the telos of eliminating the common enemy of its personal ends, though,
otherwise, it is as polarised as any conteck-ridden organisation. Career-long
enemies become friends and most inefficient officials become thorough profes-
sionals in fulfilling this task. Most of the righteous few yield to the straint and fall in line
with the majority pursuits. This success has made the police think that its
weapon is inviolable, though foul and dangerously wrongful. However, sadly, it
has forgotten that all are not the same and that there are exceptions for everything.
It is quite possible that none of such unethical methods affect the few exceptionally
strong-willed, noble individuals, but obsign their resolution not to yield to the
pravity and fight out a tout prix. I know at least one bright senior officer, still in
service in the Kamataka police, who bore all such humiliations valiantly and refused
to give away even an inch from where he stands jusqu au bout with stately grandeur
even at the cost of his promotion.

Casualty of individuality

A police official who commits his time to the services of his favoured politician
is aware of his weak position that it may embarrass him when the concerned
politician loses his power. This consciousness sensitises him to the need of garner-
ing support from all around, including subordinates, colleagues and seniors. Any
source of plain speaking among subordinates is taken with serious apprehension
and everything possible, either legal or illegal, is plotted to keep such a source in
place. It is ruthlessly hit in its most sensitive parts to bring it to its senses. This
approach has led to a myriad number of casualties: really bright, outstanding,
conscientious and four-square officers who inadvertently joined the police. Either
they are made to blunt their sensitivities and calibre to adapt to the ground reality
 or pack-up right away. The travails of ploughing the field for a fresh approach is
not only not allowed, but even the thought of such experimentation is roughed up.
Is the police department doomed to be the cold-storage of musty, old skeletons
without room for resilience? Those who reached the top with the support of
opportunistic politicians think so.

A political instrument

In an atmosphere where placements and transfers are decided by the needs and
wishes of self-seeking politicians, no police can efficiently function nor can it be
free from the vice prise of the politicians. It is not surprising that power-esurient
politicians more and more grab powers that are legally and traditionally invested
with the police department when the top brass lack the strength of character and
conviction. This leads to a position wherein the police department becomes a
chessboard on which politicians move their pieces to checkmate their adversaries
and win the political game in their favour. In other words, the police sans effective
leadership is becoming more a handmaid of politicians by moving away from its
sacred role as the guardian of law and justice and protector of the society and the
common man. The credit of bringing the police from its height of power to the present
level of absolute submission should go to the superior strength of per-
sonality of wily politicians who bent the police on their own terms with selective
use of stick and carrot. This police is not the police and what it does is not policing
in the proud sense of the term.

Changed role

With the increscent involution of the p »lice with glidder politicians, the con-
ception of the police about its own role has undergone a large-scale change. No
more does it look at crime control and maintenance of order as its first duty. With
this, the concern for crime control received a setback and crime control and
investigation have receded to the last priority except when politicians are interested
in them for a specific purpose. Only crimes that disturb politicians foment police
to galvanic and meaningful action. Other crimes receive no priority. The very
definition of the gravity of crime is adapted to suit the new conception. Those
crimes which are tolerated by politicians are no more crimes. The self-image of
the police as 'a fearless arbiter of crime' is changed to a solicious servant in
attendance at the pleasure of a politician master. This blunting of the crime card
of the police has made it less awe-inspiring and less deserving of respect from the
criminals. The police has more and more realised that criminals, particularly those
from organised syndicates are personal friends of its political masters and it is no
match for the criminals in terms of wealth, influence and social standing. The men
of the police see those criminals on equal footing with their political masters and
learn to treat them with awe. They find it absurd to act with authority against the
immarcescible criminals who are too high for the small stature of the police. It is
unfortunate that the police of the present day has never realised its infinite stature
as a law-enforcing agent vis a vis all others including criminals and politicians
 whom it is empowered to search, arrest and take to court if they deviate from their
rightful path. Sadly, the trifling wealth and the concomitant "big-man" image of
others appears to the present police as more appealing than its own awful police
authority.

Reversal of functions

The very possibility that policemen trade off their awful authority lucri causa
is an astounding phenomenon. Undoubtedly, the poor salaries and inadequate
working conditions have brought about this sad state of affairs. The hafthas and
such periodical shares of the spoils from criminal activities often are the mainstay
of the well-being of many police families. This triste glissade has unfortunately
permeated even to the highest levels in the police as reported in a shameful case
from Karnataka sometime back in 1990 wherein a IPS man and his wife on the day of the
former's retirement were taken to the court of law by the public on the
complaint of defrauding the public by selling tickets in the name of a spastic society
charity show and collecting money eo nomine. The event made big news with bold
| headlines splashed across newspapers at the time. That apart, the importance of
various police jobs is determined in police circles on the basis of the potential of
the posts for attracting illegal money from the crime world. And jobs with potential
for such gains are most sought after and the concours for such jobs is so high that
often postings to such jobs are bought by paying money in lakhs. Indeed, the
investment is made with the esperance of making it back several times over within
a short period thereafter in synergy with the crime world. It is the reason why law
and order posts, traffic policing, postings in the food enforcement cell and even
certain vigilance jobs outside the police as in the KEB for instance are known as
jobs to be earned by beating out cut-throat competition while many other jobs are
known to be punishment postings and are largely detested. It goes without saying
that judging jobs on the basis of the gauntlets they provide or on the opportunity of
service is now a matter of yore. It is the crime world with the wealth it appropriates
to each job that decides the importance or otherwise of the police jobs and ipso
facto controls the type and calibre of officers in each job. In other words, it is the
criminals who invisibly control the police ab extra rather than the police controlling
the criminals. This reversal of functions has lots to do with the low morale of the
present Indian police. Its members find themselves at the mercy of criminals whom
they are supposed to trammel and bring to book. The police is no morg confident
that it is mentally and organisationally equipped to treat criminals in malam partem.

Weakened police

The increasingly powerful and modernised crime syndicates vis a vis the age-old
police force have made crime control a misnomer in the Indian context. The
decreasing percentage of the police presence due to its failure to keep pace with the
population growth in the face of the increasing crime density, the disadvantage of
the police in re the speed of communication, transportation and weaponry before
the ultra-modern machines of the crime world, the advantage of criminals in terms
 of the choice of time and place of operation and concomitant superior numerical
strength and ability to produce surprises and the highly skilled and motivated cadres
of the criminal world pressing down a demoralised and indifferent police give
criminals an edge over the police in their encounters. Consequently, police
fatalities in such encounters are increasing. This holds good for terrorist groups,
too. Ergo, the police in India is no longer keen to actively interfere with the activities
of the crime world. The understanding between the criminals and police is that
both confine themselves to their respective fields and avoid embarrassing each
other. The police is duly paid for its silence while stray troublemakers who jump in
medias res are silenced. The Indian police is sane enough to quickly realise that
its interests are safe in silence while an uncalled-for tangling with the crime world
may invite a host of complications and comminate individual job security and lives.

Police leadership

The albatross of the atrophy of the present Indian police solely rests on the
incompetent police leadership of independent India rather than on anything else.
Unimaginative organisational planning, uninspiring operational guidance and con-
trol and lack of leadership conviction in modem police leaders has led to utter chaos,
resulting in a random chorisis of the organisation without any conceivable planning
or application of mind to the needs of effective supervision and control
mechanisms; dangerously ineffective recruitment, ineffective training, misuse of
the facilities of confidential assessment of subordinates and the degeneration of
control and supervision machinery are symptomatic organisational maladies. The
present Indian police force is utterly demotivated from its professional objectives
and police jobs are considered only as devices that provide rank, power, social
status, sundry comforts and a comfortable job to fall upon when an urge to work
arises. How can the people of India depend upon a police force of this sorry state
of affairs for their security, protection and orderly living?

Organisational growth

How deeply the police is self-centred even within its own organisation and what
care and concern the police leaders show to evolve a perficient and planned police
organisation can be assessed by the trend of evolution of the police organisation as
an increscently top-heavy setup and the speed with which promotions are affected
at different levels. In states where there were only two officers of the rank of
Inspector General of Police, for say forty thousand men and officers about ten years
back, there are now nearly twenty officers of and above the rank of Inspector
General of Police, for say fifty thousand men and officers: thereby the last ten years
account for 25% expansion in the lower levels against 1000% expansion at higher
levels. What these people at the top do for policing apart from being a drain on the
state revenue and a strain to officers down the levels with conflicting instructions
of dubious merit? Almost nothing. It is unfortunate that none in the police
administration realises that it is not the rank, but the real human stuff inside that
decides the height, excellence, merit, intelligence, honesty, integrity, respon-
 sibility, work knowledge and human qualities of a person. Promotion to higher rank
serves no purpose unless the higher rank provides a really higher agd challenging
job content and a suitable man is perforce selected to meet the increased challen-
ges.This is not the case in present police promotions where sinecures are created to
facilitate promotions to satisfy in-group instincts. Most of these jobs are without
any job content and responsibility and often are places to relax from the pressures
of family life. However, the same courtesy does not extend to the more unfortunate
ranks at lower levels including the constabulary. While vacancies at the topmost
level are filled up by promotions strictly overnight, promotions at intermediary
levels are effected in weeks or fortnights or months, depending on the rank in the
police hierarchy. It is years in the case of the constabulary. There are cases where
vancancies of Head Constables and Assistant Sub-Inspectors or Sub-Inspectors are
not filled up for several years, depriving the constabulary of their de jure promo-
tions. There are any number of instances of men in the constabulary, retiring
without a promotion non obstante their eligibility and seniority for the existing
vacancies, which are not filled up from many years. Policing is a job, performed
mostly at lower levels with decreasing involvement upto the level of Superintendent
of Police. Beyond that, it is tout court a supervisory task and in a police force with
no supervision to speak of, higher ranks are just de trop. Any move to expand these
ranks and any undue haste to promote to these levels cannot be called honest
decisions in the functional or public interest. Unfortunately, the Indian police is
doing just that and there is none to put it back on the right track.

Management of human resources

The position is worse in recruitment. Selection has become a misnomer. It is

random at best and high business at its worst. This approach to recruitment may
turn out to be a highly dangerous situation for both the governance and public life
of India. Policing is a highly sensitive profession and requires only specially
equipped people to handle it. It demands certain specific traits in its officers which
cannot be learnt by any amount of training. The police being the ultimate power-
bearer on the street, the public look to it as a a model and its mien decides public
trust in the government In the circumstances, the wrong selection to the police is
bound to be fatal to the national life. India is deeply mired in such a dangerous
situation now. There is a price fixed for each rank of the police. How can a fresh
recruit who enters service by paying a bribe be expected not to reap returns from
his large investment? What can be his mental picture of the service he enters? It is
absurd to expect professional policing from such a recruit. Those who permit such
nasty doings in the police or involve themselves to bring the organisation to its
painfully slow sphacelus are the butchers of a great tradition.

Even when there is genuine scope for proper selection in recruitment, nothing
is done to rope in the really competent. It is either because none bother much to
have a really competent person in the slot or because of the incompetence of the
persons entrusted with the job Of selection. The common aim of the police in
recruitment now is to complete the job without inviting legal hurdles at the best.
 Sometimes, even rules are overstepped to cut short procedures and do away with
cumbersome work. Even sensitive posts at the lowest level like police drivers are
filled up arbitrarily and quality suffers as a result. This is equally so in matters of
transfers as discussed in detail elsewhere.

Line of command

Everything is not right in the spine of the police organisation namely the
hierarchical order - itself. The importance of honesty, integrity, hard work and
excellence is replaced with personal loyalty and usefulness for personal odd jobs.
This is the outcome of the natural devolution of personal loyalty to politicians at
higher levels on the ladder. Those who do not come up to the expectations of
personal loyalty, fall out of favour and are eliminated from the line of command as
persona non grata. This pravity has a more demoralising effect in a force of line
of command than meets the eye. This trait in the organisation results in the
deflection of brighter, proud and four-square officers to insignificant jobs to the
advantage of the opportunistic ones who are insecure and ergo tend to make up
their famishment with personal loyalty to those in power. It is the main contributing
factor for the slow degeneration of the present Indian police.

Quality is suppressed

There are some unwanted under currents in the Indian police that make pride,
efficiency, excellence, originality and such superior qualities the objects of fear and
hatred. Perhaps, these superior qualities do not go pari passu with the line of
command by the reason of the insecure feelings, these superior qualities rouse
higher in the line. The fear is not based on reality in a disciplined force like police
where the line of command functions a tout propos without reference to personal
traits. The question is why this fear surfaces in the modem police while the
pre-independent police with all its better manpower could run without it. The
possible answer is that the line of command is a perfect mechanism in a disciplined
force when the force indulges in dejure professional duties. However, the line of
command becomes increasingly strained when it is used for personal ends as of
late. Ergo, ultimately, it is a vicious circle wherein poor leadership leads to
elimination of quality and that in turn results in poorer leadership which slowly
blights the police organisation to its triste logical end.

Police brotherhood

The police is a sacred confrerie of those who choose policing as their profession.
It is here, as brothers irrespective of caste, creed, social standing, rank or personal
traits, they live as one, in the interests of the common objective of crime control
and maintenance of law and order. How can this ideal which was once a strikingly
kenspeckle reality survive in changed circumstances where there is no common
cause except personal advancement at the cost of everything? Consequently,
groupism is abounding in the police force and jealousy has become a characteristic
feature of the ranks. There is no mutual warmth among police personnel. The
police force, once a smooth silk fabric, is now in shreds with each group pulling on
opposite sides to the detriment of the unity, essential to its survival in view of the
natural job hazards. Indifference to the other's predicament is a rule in the police
these days. Often, those in the police contribute to each other's misfortune because
of accidental bad blood or just fun. No confrerie is patent anywhere in the present
Indian police.

Lack of planning

The police, by the nature of its jobs, is required to walk hand in hand with
modem advancements to keep itself fit and functionally effective. The general
reluctance of the Indian police to adapt to new ideas and the ungainly handling of
modernisation projects have resulted in its falling en wrier in terms of modem
machines and organisational techniques in comparison to the syndicates of or-
ganised crime which keep themselves pan passu with neoteric findings and
inventions to keep themselves in excelsis of the effectiveness. En attendant,
modem communication, information, transport, office and armament gadgets are
bought for the police on the advice of some sales agents without creating the
adequate infrastructure or trained personnel for their use and without assessing the
real need of such equipments in the existing police situation. As a result, the gadgets.
so bought, fall apart with desuetude after the initial entrainement cools down. Such
a light-hearted approach to modernisation results in the police becoming more and
more an obsolete unit, apart from putting an unproductive burden on the state
exchequer.

The police is one of the most vital instruments of the public administration and
works as a link between the executive arm and judiciary. It is the ears, eyes and
limbs of the government. No government with a failing police system can survive
whatever be its other assets. It is against this background that the glitches bedevill-
ing the present Indian police should be viewed. Any complacency at this stage
about the existing police system may prove too costly for the unity and well-being
of the country and the health of its governance.

Professional policing

The police of India imprimis, should be extricated from the clutches of criminals
and politicians to make it a professional policing outfit with objectivity and
commitment to its task as the cardinal gospel. Both criminals and politicians have
stakes in the style of functioning of the police and neither of them, the criminals
with their easy money and the politicians with their easy power, let the police slip
from their grip. There is no point in beginning the cleansing operation from the
sides of the criminals or politicians. It has to begin from the side of the police by
insulating it from the vile influences of criminal wealth and political power. If this
bifarious object is fulfilled, all others fall into place by themselves. Once the vile
 shadows of the criminals and politicians are removed from the face of the police,
it is certain to resile to its old professional self - a highly committed, motivated and
efficient force. But the golden question is how to achieve this end and save the
police from these two debilitating influences.

Independent police

In a free society like India with a democratic political system in the saddle,
interaction between various strata of society is a natural phenomenon and efforts
to raise barriers between blocks is bound to be infructuous. Yet the gauntlet of
saving the police from dangerous influences should be courageously taken up in
the national interest. The fact of the police being a disciplined force is both an
advantage and disadvantage in this stupendous challenge. It is an advantage because
the weapon of discipline, if discreetly employed, can be used to block the police
from undue interaction with unwanted elements. It is a disadvantage because the
police with its trained response may find it difficult to isolate itself from the personal
behests of its political masters. It is left to police leaders to devise appropriate
techniques to make the best use of the existing advantages in this sacred and
patriotic task. To begin with, somebody among the police leaders should decide to
bell the cat. Who can do that while all of them are willing partners in creating the
vested nexus that helps them to ascend to their present high positions in the
hierarchy? Yet, the world is not as bad it is painted. There have to be exceptions
for everything and thus, good people among the police too, who by the quirks of
dextro tempore avoid the long arms of Satan and survive to reach the place where
they rightfully belong. These breaches in the otherwise swarth layers of clouds
throw rays of hope upon the future of Indian police.

Police authority

The first and foremost job to be done is to free the police from the unhealthy
influence of all hues of politicians by making it responsible to an independent
authority with absolute power to take decisions on matters pertaining to policing
and police organisation. The authority should be a professional body with men of
proven probity and quality as members, who have reached a stage from where they
need not sacrifice their convictions to appease those in power. A working arran-
gement is to be devised by which the authority is responsible directly to the
legislature and functions as an independent authority like the judiciary, Comptroller
and Auditor General or Election Commissioner.

Core group

The damage already done to the police by the ancien regime can be undone by
overhauling the recruitment procedure and investing utmost care to ensure that
really the best from the job seekers are let in to the service. Any interference in
matters of recruitment should be promptly and decisively resisted. To make
recruitment an efficient operation, only highly qualified officers of proven probity
 should be entrusted with the task with the absolute authority to take decisions within
the framework of law. The ugly head of bribery in recruitment should be ruthlessly
crushed and the unhealthy tendency of making recruitment a business should be
curbed tout a fait. Infusion of good blood at least at this late hour is certain to undo
the damage done till now and bring the ancien regime yet extant inside to its senses.
Indeed, the recruitment should be followed with a sound training that sensitises the
recruits to their professional ethics and motivates them to their sacred duties and
responsibilities.

Contented police personnel

Police jobs should be made attractive with good salaries and satisfactory
working conditions that give the strength to resist the bait thrown by the criminals.
It is proved by social scientists that the incidence of bribery is inversely proportional
to the financial strength of a social group. Therefore, better salaries and eximious
working conditions definitely make the police less sensitive to these lures. This
would be a major step in prising the hold of criminals over the police. The measure
must be closely followed by a perficient and strictly professional policy of place-
ments to ensure the right man comes to the right job with merit and honesty being
duly rewarded. Measures to ensure an unbiased assessment of the work and
character of subordinates strengthen and place the police organisation on sound footing.
Those who are empowered to assess subordinates and their work must be
made answerable therefore and any unscrupulous and random discharge of their
duties should condemn them forever for the misuse of this sacred responsibility to
the future of the organisation.

Fair play

Creation of a high power core group of people who are adept in assessing men
and character within the aforesaid police authority may help to create a feeling of
confidence and job security and prod them into discharging their official duties
fearlessly. This group which oversees the work of police personnel from a distance
should be made ultimately responsible for all career decisions. The responsibility
of officers in assessing the work of their subordinates which forms the major
embarrassment of the present Indian police must be limited to giving their opinion
about performance to the core group; the expert core group processes the opinion
by its own research, expertise and discretion and takes responsible decisions on its
own. The group must be made responsible for development planning of the police,
work assessment, job analysis, recruitment and management of human resources.
Institution of such a core group to oversee the career development of police
personnel without personal bias may bring revolutionary changes by committing
the police to its work ethics and professional ends with due single-mindedness.

Mental quality

It is a tragedy in the current Indian police that there is no relation between the
 efficiency and performance of an official and his standing in the organisation. The
police officials are so indifferent to the performance of their subordinates and their
work turnout that they are absolutely in the dark about the standard of work turned
out under their supervision. Another reason for this sad affair may be that they are
unqualified to assess. This situation leads to random assessment when a senior is
statutorily bound to assess and in the process, talent withers and opportunists
overtake high-calibre workers on the hierarchical ladder. This tragic melange can
be brought to order by exposing police officers periodically to motivation courses
where they are taught about the work they are required to perform, its importance
and how to discharge their duties. There is an innate trait in the police that makes
people entering it shut their minds and distance themselves from all hues of mental
activities. Police training must endeavour to break this trait and coax trainees to
open their minds and reflect on all matters before making decisions. Often, the
habit of reading becomes a casualty, once a person enters the police. The police is
in no way antipodean to mental and scholastic pursuits. It is a mystery what there
is in the police that binds its men to let their minds and hearts languish by desuetude.
Police researchers must look to this matter to mould the police into an organisation
which acts and thinks before resorting to action. Before this happens, police
training has a major role to make a recruit a thinking animal with a heart to feel and
an intelligent instinct to follow.

Professional knowledge

This negative approach to reading and thinking has resulted in poor professional
knowledge in the police, particularly at the higher ranks. Work knowledge is
generally limited to what is remembered from previous work experience and bits
of what is learnt from books during police training, decades before. Their defective
conception about supervision compounds the situation by depriving them of the
benefit of learning new things during supervision of work. The style of supervision
in the police should be seen to be believed. All orders to subordinates emanate
from a perfect void. The orders warrant subordinates to feed them what is to be
done in a given situation and the reply received is returned to the same subordinate
as an order to perform. The best style of supervision in the police is no more than
holding a meeting of subordinates wherein the latter are allowed to arrive at a course
of action to meet a given challenge, and the decision is returned to them as an order
to perform. This style of ineffective supervision must stop if quality is required in
police work. The system of overlapping supervision because of multiple ranks,
where none really discharges his supervisory role must be scrapped to make the
police a meaningful organisation. A thorough overhauling of police training
programmes and application of modem organisation techniques to bring in effective
check and control mechanisms would go a long way in ameliorating the ground
realities in the police.

Universality of crime

On ultimate analysis, crime is a universal phenomenon. All living beings are

 criminals in varying degree. Criminal thought is a part of the natural function of a
healthy mind as is the moral restraint that prevents the criminal thought from being
acted upon. External restraints brought about by the fear of law, custom and adverse
reaction reinforce the inner restraint to prevent the committing of crime. However,
as the force of external restraints weakens for diverse reasons and the proportion
of gain to be made in committing a crime overweighs the risks involved in the
balance sheet of the operation, the lure of crime increases and the deed is done. It
is the social situation which controls the external restraints to make committing a
crime an asset or a liability and thereby decides the proliferation or suppression of
crime with human nature being what it is always. Criminals are criminals because
society gives them easy openings to thus meet their needs. Politicians love to befriend
criminals rather than bring them to book because the society they live in
makes their lives comfortable with criminals as friends rather than as adversaries.
Policemen find the crime world sweeter because it is how things stand for them.
The remedy for the proliferation and endearment of crime lies in changing the social
dynamics to make crime a liability to criminals and criminals a liability to
politicians and the police. In the existing nexus of politics, crime and police, crime
is an asset to criminals and criminals are an asset to politicians and police.
Criminals should not be construed as a separate block of citizenry. They are a
cross-section of people from all fields of life who have moved beyond a commonly
accepted degree in their criminal tendencies. Criminality may be prolific in certain
civilised fields like commerce and industry in the form of tax evasion, violation of
foreign exchange regulations, hoarding etc; such crimes are generally not taken
seriously in spite of the public awareness of the crimes, with the social standing of
the criminals remaining unaffected. Government servants too come under this
category of criminals because of the unconfined corruption in public life. It is a
fact that Indian public life is a vast field of criminal activities and politicians and
police, though the custodians and protectors of the Indian public life, form part of
the crime world. However, knowledge of the involvement of politicians and police
in this nasty world stirs the public conscience, for the reason that they are supposed
to be the people on whom the public relies to save them. But, it cannot be because
they are also part of the society which makes public life a nasty affair and nourishes
it.

Crime and national economy

A word about the effect of the nasty nexus between politics, crime and police
on the national economy. Unity gives strength. It is true about the nasty nexus
also. The only telos of the nexus is gain by synergy, the synergy which brings
confidence and courage to the troika in its nefarious activities, thereby inducing it
to more daring and innovative criminal activities. This results in proliferation of
crime, apart from affecting the quality of crime by opening up new avenues for
operation. As the ultimate end of all crime is illegal gain and the incidence of crime
is directly related to increase in black money in the national economy, the prolifera-
tion of crime invariable results in inflation and the weakening of the national
economy.
 More dangerously, it results in a polarisation of the society into criminal rich
and honest poor and destroys the country's moral fabric. The increscent incidence
of easy money, material comforts and political power of the criminal rich ultimately
leads to internal strife, emeute and popular terrorism.

Social polarization

The indulgence of the rich and powerful in crime popularises criminal activities
by bringing an aura of status to them and negating all inhibitions in the popular
mind. Society easily accepts the example of the wealthy and powerful for making
an easy buck to lead comfortable lives in the world where life is becoming
increasingly difficult because of the spurt in black money, caused by the prolifera-
tion of crime. While decent life becomes impossible by honest methods, the need
of survival forces honest citizenry to accept crime as a way of life as the last resort.
This would be where politicians, criminals and police lead the country.

Easy money and easy wealth have a tendency to inflate. Criminals tend to spend
lavishly. This ends up in a spurt in prices of land, building and essential com-
modities while honest men have to toil hard for an extra quarter. Crime begets
money and money begets more money and more money begets power, comfort and
everything. In the crush, honest man is lost forever. The ocean of criminal wealth
around him which is beyond even his wildest dreams frustrates him and ravages his
sense of morality and righteousness. It turns him violently against all human values
and decency, leading him to a world of crime and violence. It is what we see in
Punjab, Kashmir, Assam, in far away Srilanka or even in Naxalism where it is
hidden in the guise of political ideology. It is an irony that politicians and the police,
who create the demons, eat their own pies by falling to the bullets of the grievously
hurt, self-righteous, once innocent people. It is said that even the dacoits in
Chambal are symptomatic of this social and economic malady.

It is true that crime cannot be eliminated from any society as the tendency to
commit crime is ingenerate in human nature. However, crime can be supressed by
appropriate straints. What straints and how they are to be applied are ironically
decided by politicians and the police. If they come out of their indulgent interests
to commit themselves to their professional objectives, they can certainly save India
from the present predicament. Not that every politician and every policeman can
come out to achieve this noble task, but there certainly are noble elements yet
surviving as exceptions among them, who should take up cudgels in favour of the
Indian polity and sacrifice their lives and careers, if necessary, to make the
renaissance of Indian police and Indian public life possible. The question yet to be
posed is whether the inveterate vested interests will let these sacrifices bear fruit.
Let us hope for the best.
TWO

INDIAN POLICE AT THE CROSSROADS

Policing is a reaction of the society to its warped situations. The process of

policing is always in a state of flux to keep a la hauteur de rapidly evolving
nature of the social complexities. In this sense, the police is a reflection of the
face of the national life. Stability in the national life slows down the process of
policing; a volatile situation strings police to high tension and energises it.
Growth or retardation in social progress accordingly reflects the style of
policing. When the nation stands at the crossroads, the police also finds itself on
compita: at the intersection of a reneging past and a converging future. This is
where India and its police stand now after four decades of becoming a republic.
As with old generations which saw life, society and politics prior to the
independence give way to new generations in national life and old passions and
values atrophy before the gust of speed, smartness and a garish way of life, the
police too finds itself in a peregrine role with no past for continuity and no
future for creativity. The police finds itself rising from a claut to pave the new
path; it must blindly choose from alternatives, it thinks available to it. There is
no past experience to fall upon, no future guidelines to pursue. Yet, it must walk
with time to fulfil its raison d'etre. The Indian police finds itself in this blind-
spot today, at the crossroads from where it should build bridges to the future.
The immanent swither of the compita is like the new freedom of a caged animal.
It must acclimatise and warm up to the new situation, shed us mental fetters,
bring strength to its legs and learn to move au naturel. A slip at this stage would
be a sempiternal tragedy; a right move here would be a lucky rise forever. At this stage in
its evolution, the possibilities are endless. The Indian police now
stands at this momentous juncture.

Importance of police in national life

The police and policing are larger than an individual and his self-interests.
The police is an institution which is constituted of man, machinery and ideas.
Man is just a minute constituent of the monolith that, is the police. An
institution of the police organisation's dimensions naturally has defacements at
places that in no way affect the overall view of the structure. Ergo, minor
casualties are common in such a mammoth edifice. Only when the defacements
have an impact on the overall mien of the structure and distort its face, do
corrective measures become comme il faut. The police should be continuously
watched for such vital distortions, for its health or otherwise has a serious
bearing on the national life. A minor shift in the style of policing in the country
can make a life-and-death difference to myriad people. It is in this perspective
that decisions regarding policing should be taken. The decisions become
 sensitive when the police reaches crossroads and forces further decisions on the
course of its passage. A wrong turn? The police may inadvertently tear the
fabric of the national life to shreds and ruin the country. A right step? An era of
perfect security, order and peace. Only a selfless analysis of the needs of the
time and assessment of the avenir would give the insight necessary to make the
right choice about the course to be pursued. Such an analysis must be carried out
by highly competent persons at the highest level who can see things
dispassionately and take decisions. They must be people who have an overall
view of things and are capable of seeing them against the wider background of
the national interest. It is a very responsible job, requiring thorough knowledge
of the nuances of the police and policing. The people who do it must be capable
of taking hard decisions which may often go against their own interests and may
have far-reaching consequences. This book is an obvious effort in this
direction. The Indian police must give serious thought to what it wants to be in
future and take tough decisions.

Mishandling of police in independent India

There is an impression that the Indian police is not what it was before
Independence. The previous pride, toughness and ferocious commitment to
duties are no more patent. The Indian police has become soft, humble and easy-
going in post-independence days. Humility and pressures all round deprived it
of its vitality. The police has become a widely abused organisation by the virtue
of its conticent submission to the wishes of its masters under false notions of discipline. It
is the popular scapegoat for anything and everything that goes
wrong in the public life. In the circumstances, a sense of insecurity has
developed in the police that comminates career-life. A natural outcome of this
fix is, taking things easy with eyes and ears shut, unless career interests warrant
otherwise. Commitment to policing is sacrificed in the process. These
developments have reduced the police to a toy that moves only when the spring
inside unwinds. New entrants to the police who begin to run left and right with
nascent entrainement in the first few months, soon realise the realities on the
ground when the wounds on the body of their career dehisce, looking fatal and
ready to gorge their esperance for the avenir. This is the triste spiel of the Indian
police now.

Outside interference in policing

A serious malady affecting the tough and no-nonsensical image of the police
is the interference of people of some standing in the society with the quotidian
policing at all levels. An organisation, looking for a serious image, cannot afford
this luxury. Policing must be insulated from public pressures except at the top,
to which all policing affairs must be responsible. People handling policing
should be responsible only to law and their heads in the police department and
to none else. The regulation of policing policies in all details must be controlled
and guided by the top. On the other hand, the line authority of the organisation
 must be all-powerful to guide and regulate policing and police administration
and bear the responsibility for everything below the level. Such a setup sine
dubio presumes a pollent leadership. For an organisation with powers and
responsibilities like the police, such a strong leadership is sine qua non
otherwise as well.

A police organisation, open to public pressures can do no policing worth the

name. The very idea of being receptive to pressures and interferences
presupposes a lack of will for objectivity and justice. It is criminal elements
who cultivate sources for such straints on the police, that have put the policing
on the wrong rails. Pressure on policing often renders the police to commit
crimes under the veil of authority, either by protecting criminals or more
dangerously, by replacing them with innocent people as criminals. The
possibility of the police being open to the straints of the rich and powerful,
deprives it of its credibility. A police force that works at the behests of the rich
and powerful can guard their interests only. It would thus be the villain to the
hoi polloi. Does democratic India need such a police force to perpetuate the
tyranny of the poor and helpless by the rich and powerful? Democratic India
tolerated such a police in the last four decades. India and its people however,
must now abraid to the situation and spawn a police that behoves to the trust laid
on it.

Fall of professional standards

The aberration of professional objectivity is the kenspeckle sema of the

police in independent India. The problem was simple in British India where
ruler and ruled were distinctly bifurcated and ipso facto the loyalty of police was
perspicaciously defined unlike the Indian republic of democratic genre where
people rule themselves through elected representatives. Here, the loyalty of
police to the public and public law is the professional ethic; misplaced loyalty to
an individual, a family, a party or an ideology at the cost of the general public is
an apostasy from the inviolable professionalism of the police. The police, in a
democracy, is the guardian of public interests and public safety unlike in the raj
where the police protected the interests of the raj. This distinction is forgotten
in independent India where mental fetters are yet to be broken and legacies of
the British rule continue inveterated. How can a police that stays loyal to
personal, familial or party interests ever discharge its functions objectively to
law and general public? What can its locus standi be when a different person or
party comes to power? A sequacious police is an asset to any individual or
party and no sensible individual or party distances it in name of the professional
ethics. It is the paravant duty of the police not to breach the edifice of the police
organisation and its spirit by misprising its professional standards. This
infrangible obligation is thrown to the winds in the maelstrom of career
advancements by the self-seeking gendarmerie of the Indian republic.

A byproduct of this degenerate trend is the rise of opportunists and

 sycophants to key posts and the fall of pollent caractere to insignificant and
humiliating slots. The trend creates a catena of reactions that slowly-cats up the
vitality of the police organisation and reduces it to a foul bunch of bloodhounds
of the rich and powerful few. The shoddy creatures sitting tout court above men
of probity is a dangerous situation in an organisation like the police where a stiff
hierarchical order and a command-obedience relationship exist between ranks.
This reverse order of merit is sure to bring frustration and the collapse of the
organisation someday ex consequentl. This is because, a few selfish elements
put ain interests before the professional and national interests. And this is in a
disciplined orgapisation. This is where commitment to organisational objects is
the life-fluid of the profession.

Police culture of free India

The British were the forefathers, of the unified Indian police. They created
the reticulation of the police force for India with their own designs and objects
in sight. It was a force that met the needs of the time. In an age of rapid
changes due to the opening up of new vistas and dimensions to life by inventions and
discoveries in science and technology, nothing remains
quiescent. The scope, design and objects of the Indian police underwent a basic
metamorphosis with the transfer of government to native hands. The process
spawned a synod wherein undemanding aspects of both the worlds survived to
create a new police culture. The distinguishing traits of the Indian police of the
British vintage like objectivity, apoliticism, commitment, discipline, quality and
high standards were discarded as percgrine and irrelevant in the changed
circumstances; and traditional Indian values like simplicity, charity, wisdom,
mutual respect, encraty and human qualities were distanced as indign to the
police culture. The convenient factors of the old and new worlds were chosen to
warp a new world of police culture while demands on policing were at the
crucial stage in the creant years of national independence. The cabal was struck
by the Indian police officers who rapidly rose in their career overnight to fill the
void, created by the resignations of their senior British officers in the ancien
regime on the eve of independence. The demand for creating a new work-
relationship with native political leaders was a historical opportunity to carve a
new police culture in free India. The incompetence of the then police
impresarios, their greed, parochial approach and self-interests spawned the
wrong type of police culture. They laid mendacious praxis to those lower by
bending laws and conscience to aggrate men in power with the myopic object of
promoting ain career and personal interests. The police became a lithe tool in
the hands of the power-brokers of free India. How can the police be objective,
honest, apolitical, committed and disciplined in such an atrophy and how can it
uphold the rule of law and justice in line with its professional edit in such a
circumstance?

Police at the cross-section

 Policing, being a specialised job wherein few people venture to have a keek
owing to its fearful image, still remains an enigma to outsiders including
administrators and the general public. Its locus standi somewhere in between
the armed forces and civil administration renders its structure, scope and style of
functioning undefined in the monolith of governance. This, compounded with
the prolate powers of the police to cover all aspects of living, has made the
police an awful company to live with. This is a situation of one-way traffic
wherein the police have a say on every aspect of the life of the people while the
general public is dumb and blindfold to everything about the police. The
situation has placed the police at the unusual advantage of dictating what should
be what, where and how in policing and police organisation. Sine dubio, it is a
godsent benison for the police while right man sits at the sconce. To the worst
mauvais moment of the police, sycophants ramp the ladder and reach the top to
hold reins and guide the destiny of the police in independent India and consequently the
Indian police has got what it deserved, namely a spiritless
culture, composed of the weak and bad precedences of its incompetent leaders.

It has been a long time since independence. What peopie and those in the
police accepted as standards in the inchoate entrainement of the dawn of
independence, no more stir them. The atrophy of more than two generations of
independent India opened their eyes to what was happening around, in the name
of the supercherie of the self-rule. Enough is enough. Though late, they
realised for certain that self-rule does not mean fraud and tyranny by their own
people, that self-interests know no nationality, that the cabals of compatriots are
no less pernicious than that of the aliens. Forty-five years is a long enough
period to realise the need for breaking away from the corrupt innards of the
state-crafts of independent India. India and the Indian police stand at this
crossroads at this hour.

Police as social doctors

Policemen are social doctors and policing is a surgical operation of the

society to systematically remove cancerous growths from its body. What if the
band of doctors itself is infested with serious cancerous growths? This is the
position of the present-day Indian police. The police, as the enforcers of law
and protectors of the public interests, wield tremendous powers for the public
good. Such powers to interfere with the life of the citizens must be invested
only in people of high probity and conscience. Otherwise, the powers by
themselves ruin the social fabric of the country and bring anarchy. Powers to
search, seize, remove, detain, direct, arrest, hit and even kill may prove
pernicious in the wrong hands. Powers to decide who has done wrong and how
to prosecute them, when invested in dishonest hands, certainly ruin society and
the country. How these powers are exercised depends imprimis on the work
ethic of the organisation. Though it is the people of an organisation au fond
who build the job-culture of the organisation, it is this job-culture of the
organisation that creates a person in the organisation at a given point of time.
 Even a degenerate caractere turns honest and efficient in an honest and efficient
environment. The work-culture builds and moulds vitality to meet the general
atmosphere around. Similarly, an honest and efficient person in a degenerate
culture is bound to atrophy sooner or later, unless his individual strength
superates the vitiating work-culture of the organisation. Ergo, building up a
proper job-culture is the bedrock of a perficient police organisation.

Unequal treatment

The problem of the Indian police lies in a lack of proper understanding of the scope and
ground rules of the work. This results in the absence of a proper set
of standards to approach the call of duty. Consequently, each call of duty is
approached subjectively, depending upon the mood and understanding of the
police in charge of the situation. The subjective policing on the Indian scene is
unfortunately accepted by all strata of people sans prole. The Indian police
never recognises the equality of ail and the need for equal coverage of policing
facilities to all citizens of India. Whether it is in matters of protection,
maintenance of order, crime control or investigation of crimes committed, the
standards of policing available are kenspeckle in their disparity for a nameless
poor farmer in a remote village and an ex-Prime Minister, both of whom have
equal rights before the law and the Indian constitution to have crimes against
them investigated. The coverage is nonpareil for a landlord and an agricultural
labourer. The point is not that the principle of equality should balk the ground
realities, but that the policing must have a reasonable set of standards, within
which more important and less important aspects of the policing must operate.
It will not be so in the Indian police until people who place their personal
interests beyond everything including law, justice, fairness, objectivity,
righteousness, career pride, professional interests of policing and the nation hold
the reins at the highest levels of the police, courtesy of those whom they serve
better than the hoi polloi.

Policing approach

There are two types of approach to policing as distinguishable on the Indian

scene, namely,

a) The playful approach, where the police as players in a football

game, play the game within the scope of the ground rules to have the ball inside
the goal without committing a foul. Tout au contraire to the real football game,
here the game is played dispassionately and leisurely and played because they
are paid to play the game; and,

b) The passionate approach, wherein the police break all rules and
laws that come in the way with the sole approach of making their task a success.

They may even commit dangerous crimes in pursuance of their goals.

 The Indian police oscillate between these two disparate approaches,
depending upon, for whose advantage they work and what would be their
personal grist ultimately. Only a few high-flying people with money and power
en arrier to back policing of the passionate genre deserve the 'Passionate
Approach'. Others must remain contented with the 'Playful Approach'. Both
approaches are indign to a dignified police organisation. The former, namely
the 'Playful Approach' is against the tenets of professionalism and a professional
commitment to work. The latter, namely the Passionate Approach in spite of
its commitment to its goals, is devoid of its professionalism by lack of
professional commitment to the objects of objectivity, fairness and justice.
Policing by criminal methods cannot be called professional policing. The right
approach to professional policing is a syndesis of both the approaches in which
the commitment to achieve goals follow the professionalism of rightful means in
respecting rules and laws of which the police as professionals are guardians.
Professional commitment implies achieving goals within the parameters of the
permitted methods. The professional end of the police is upholding the interests
of law and justice. Policing is not an end by itself. It is a tool to serve law and
justice. Policing by committing crimes against law and justice is committing
crimes against policing. The Indian police is yet to show its maturity of
professional commitment in policing, which as a standard policing approach
would be equally available to all the needy, irrespective of their status, wealth
and position in the society.

Criminal tendencies in police

A serious subculture of the Indian police in Indian hands is committing

crimes to prevent and detect crimes and breaking laws to catch law-breakers:
indeed in the name of showing results. The misplaced stress on results sans a
concern for organisational and national objects of law and justice in committing
grave malfeasances only reflects a shallow intellectual commitment to policing
by Indian police leaders and a bankruptcy of ingine to delve to the roots of
policing problems. Third-degree methods in crime detection is the point. Even
senior officers tacitly supporting inhuman crimes of the third-degree methods on
suspects, who may turn out to be innocent at the end, is not uncommon. Crimes
are crimes whether they are committed by the police or by the public. What
right has the police to inflict sufferings on others albeit on suspicion? After all,
it is not the agency to pass judgement on crimes. None placed the police ayont
the scope of the Indian Penal Code. What justification can the police have to
commit crimes to collect evidences of other crimes? The Indian Penal Code
never conceived two sets of laws for the crimes committed by the police and
others. Crimes committed by the police in the name of detecting other crimes
are not less harmful to the well-being of society. The sadism and criminal
tendencies of the police are not more justifiable than those of the general public.
On the other hand, society has to be avizefull and deracinate criminal tendencies
from the police, for, criminals from the police with the state plenipotence and
laws behind it can be a real death-knell to the society. The difference between
crimes for official and crimes for personal ends is wafer thin. Those who have
tasted the blood of crime, takes to that more easily than others, because of their
special accesses to the field and special privileges. A good police force requires
an inveterate cause against crime and criminality. In absence of such a cause,
the police may metamorphose into a demonic organisation that throws the
country into a mux of atrophy.

In an atmosphere of the maintenance of law and order in the hands of

unprincipled police, queer things may take place. Long ago, a dacoity was
reported in the house of a person of doubtful character at Betgeri in Dharwar
district. People who had knowledge of the coup defond opined that the act was
committed by his illegitimate son, after a serious quarrel, the preceding night.
He had bad relations with and court cases pending against the illegitimate son.
The investigation of the case by the local police also obsigned the matter. The
person who had cultivated some standing in Betgeri thought it imperative after
he settled his feuds with the illegitimate son, to have the case of dacoity
substantiated as a professional offence to save his family name. Soon, he
patched up relations with the young man, settled his court cases with him and
arranged for the case to be chargesheeted, with an ex-convict of Stuartpuram
being picked up and shown as accused. A mangalasutra recast from the gold
recovered in some other case was shown as property seized from the criminal
out of the property worth of about 300 gms of gold being reportedly snatched
away. Arrest, recovery, detection and chargesheet followed after a decade of
the reported commission of the dacoity. Such developments make criminal
administration a mockery. What a serious breach of the public trust and what a
serious crime is it by the police officials in consciously involving a person,
albeit an ex-convict, in a crime in which they knew, he did not commit and
fabricating evidence to a crime which never took place to help to settle the
family affairs of a bad character? Such paradigms reflect to what levels of
criminality the Indian police has sunk to. Percase, the weather is stormiest
before the return to stillness. The boundless pravity of the police, perchance, is
the sema of the advent of a new age of honest and committed policing in India.

In another instance that dates back to 1981, a police official holding the
charge of Koppal police subdivision in Karnataka picked up a poor goldsmith
from a small town of a neighbouring district for interrogation about receiving
stolen properties. He subjected him to inhuman torture in a tourist bungalow of
the same town for two nights to make the innocent goldsmith confess to an act
which he did not do. The wife and children of the goldsmith, who spotted him
in the tourist bungalow after endless running from pillar to post, were
mercilessly scared away from the place even while they could hear his agonised
shrieks. The goldsmith succumbed and died on the second night of torture. The
Koppal official who had worked as Circle Police Inspector in the town until a
few months before, carried out this illicit, nefarious activity without the
knowledge of the senior police officers of the town. The news of the lockup
death, as such deaths are popularly known, broke out in local and other
 newspapers. The wife of the goldsmith filed a private complaint before the
local court about the killing of her husband. The district Superintendent of
Police and the Range Deputy Inspector General of Police, in whose good books the
Koppal official was as the Circle Inspector of the small town, due to his
liberal give-and-take approach, rose to the occasion to save their protege from
any harm. They visited the town and entrusted the investigation of the case to a
complaisant Deputy Superintendent of Police of a neighbouring subdivision
with perspicuous oral directions to finalise the case as not proved, before the
magistrate who received the wife's private complaint took cognisance of the
plaint. The officious Deputy Superintendent of Police duly complied with the
directions and sent his investigation report to the court for action u/s 2l0 of the
Cr.P.C. Thus ended the case of cold-blooded torture and culpable homicide of
an innocent goldsmith. The person who committed the crime stealthily in a
place outside his jurisdiction now lives a retired life, unaffected by the crime in
anyway and the two officers who saved him from the wheel of justice are
continuing in service at higher ranks. It is such success stories of cruelty and
criminality that make the police appear like a criminal demon. What right has
the police to investigate and prosecute criminals while it protects killer criminals
from its ain field to the disservice of law and justice?

In another incident, a police official who got posted as police chief of a state
of India in 1986 on the support of his community, wanted to favour a fingerprint
Sub-InspeCtor, who had been under suspension for a long time after being
arrested in a criminal case involving community interests, en revanche to the
support of his community for his elevation as police chief, by releasing the latter
from suspension even while the criminal case was at the trial stage in court. He
summoned the Superintendent of Police in charge of the Sub-Inspector and
examined the file about the suspension after assuming the charge as police chief.
The Superintendent of Police, who was a greenhorn in such matters, failed to
understand that the action was an indication that he was to release the Sub-
Inspector from the suspension coute que coute. Even if he understood the tacit
meaning of the act, he could not act selon les regles for two reasons; a) that the
Sub- Inspector was suspended by an officer of the rank of Deputy Inspector
General of Police and ipso facto no officer below that rank was empowered to
release the official from the suspension as per civil service rules, and b) that as
the official was under suspension for being arrested in a criminal case and the
case was then pending trial in court of law, release from suspension was not en
regle. After a fortnight, the police chief secured the fingerprint Sub-Inspector's
release from suspension. However, he nourished esoteric spite for the young
Superintendent of Police for not understanding what he wanted him to do; he
manipulated the records and ensured that the latter lost his selection for the
Indian Police Service during the selection committee meeting, held after three
years. The career of the bright officer is in shambles now. Such cases of
avenging the noncooperation in criminal activities of those at higher ranks are
common in the Indian police these days. This egregious trend adversely affects
the policing outfit by weakening its cause for fairness, law and justice.
 How subordinates are brought to requisite shapes is a different story tout
ensemble. A young subdivisional police officer in a small town that was known
for speculative business activities, conducted a raid on a library, run by a
powerful local community as a common gambling house where prominent
people of the town were patrons. He apprehended more than fifty prominent
people including the richest business men, senior government officials and local
politicians with huge stake monies. Though the library had been a blue-chip
gambling den for many years, none dared to raid it in spite of repeated public
petitions. As law requires that the place must first be proved as a common
gambling house, the subdivisional police officer entered the names of all those
who were gambling at the place on the Station House Diary of the town police
station and let them out with written warning that cases would be booked if they
continued to gamble there. The officer learnt too late that the gambling den was
patronised by the Superintendent of Police of the district and the Deputy
Inspector General of the range and the men whose names were brought on the
police Station records were their friends. He was transferred out to a sinecure
post tout de suite of the incident, with his annual confidential report stating that
the public might revolt against the officer if he had continued in the police
department. The library continues to be a gambling den even now.

The Deputy Inspector General of Police at the place of the new posting of
the officer wanted the maledict young Deputy Superintendent of Police to marry
a girl from his circle. The parents of the young officer fearing chantage got
their son married in hurry to a girl of their choice. This antagonised the Deputy
Inspector General. His next annual confidential report showed the junior as a
liability to the police department. He also prevailed year after year upon other
officers who wrote confidential reports of the officer to incorpse adverse
remarks. Most of them obliged and this bright junior officer ended up with a
series of unsubstantiated adverse remarks in his annual confidential reports.
All his appeals were never allowed to reach the government. It is to his credit
that he is yet unbroken and continues in police service while his far less
competent colleagues have superated him on the career ladder and he is
successively denied important postings though there is not a single thing in his
career to justify such a treatment. Undeterred by the man-made dies mali
heaped on him by the departmental heads by refusing him selection to the all
India service in preference to his less qualified and less competent juniors, he
later addressed the chief secretary of the government not to consider him any
more for the service. He took this unprecedented autophagous demarche in
utter contemn to the corrupt departmental heads who sit above him to decide his
career avenir.

These garish paradigms are just a croquis of the coup defend of the criminal
clinamen of the people in today's Indian police. In no way are they more
committed to law and justice than the criminal elements of the society. Does not the
police need people in its fold with deeper passion for law and justice?
Is it by design or accident that independent India raised a criminal outfit to catch
criminals? It is in the interest of the Indian police to accept the reality in its
naked form so as to inspire remedial measures.

Policing by false publicity

Sadly, the police of independent India learnt to rely on poor public memory
to obliterate its poor performance. Incompetent and directionless reporting by
the Indian media helps them in this image-salvaging task. It is a fashion in
police circles to issue press notes about detection of major dacoity cases after
small-time thieves are apprehended. Only if somebody from the press or public
pursues the information of the press-notes, will they come to know that no
dacoity case has been really detected and that the loud claims of successful
policing are only meant to hoodwink the public, press and political masters. It
is interesting to note that most claims of detection of dacoity cases coincide with
legislative assembly sessions. This is true at least in Bangalore City where
during 1989-91, such press notes abundantly appeared in newspapers during
legislative assembly sessions. Of late, the public has leamt to take such claims
cum grain sails and consequently the credibility of the police is waning in its
eyes. The tough no-nonsense image of the Indian police of the British vintage
has given way to a nonsensical, comical image in free India. What better thing
can come from hoc genus omne hype?

Unitary police administration

In the current system of policing in India, police stations and district police
units form basic units of the administration. Some of the functions discharged
at these levels have concurrent jurisdiction with some special units at state and
national levels. Crime investigation in special circumstances can be taken over
from the district police administration by the state CID or the CBI at the
national level. So, it is with the intelligence collection, security operations, the
raising of armed police forces, maintenance of crime records etc. The police in
the states is devised as an independent unit. In a vast country like India,
policing being shared between scores of independent units with no
perspicaciously defined mechanism of cooperation, the problem occurs of
coordination and unity of purpose in tackling challenges that cover more then
one of these units. There are too many challenges such as these in the
increasingly complex society of India. Except for the sense of national unity,
there is nothing common among these units to approach the gauntlets with a
common cause. Even the common Indian Police Service is unable to bring
about a unity of purpose to policing throughout India. This gives an impression
of fragmentation in the Indian police. A fragmented police cannot turn out work
in full stream, owing to the waste by leakage in the process of co-ordination
between the fragmented pans. India must consider devising a pollent unitary
police administration at the centre with full control over subordinate state and
union territory police setups. This would avoid coordination problems and help
policing to be more purposeful in tackling challenges from the national
perspective. It also makes available larger resources from the national level for
policing apart from strengthening the sense of belonging to one police. This is
necessary in the interests of the country and its policing in the future.

Study and research in policing

Policing is a field of specialised study. There is the need of in-depth study

of policing as a discipline, apart from research to improve policing functions.
Police administration is a distinct field with sui generis characteristics. The
police organisation with its hierarchical order, stiff discipline, nonesuch policing
characteristics, unique operational difficulties and functional modalities poses
its own challenges. These challenges must be met and superated more suo.
This requires the development of the subjects of police and policing as a distinct
field of intense study and research. Whatever was done in this field till now has
not sufficed and has contributed nothing to policing methods arid style. A
myriad problems in the field of practical policing stare planners in the face, be
these problems of operational strategies, timing of the operations, procedural
hurdles, organisational planning, control techniques, information and feedback
systems, communication networks, effective supervision, leadership qualities,
work distribution, work measurement, job analysis or human relationships.
Useful study on and research into these subjects would make a momentous
impact on the style and effectiveness of policing in India. Such studies and
research impart respectability to police and policing by creating an intellectual
dimension. The academic interests work as stepping stones in remodelling the
police organisation and redefining policing functions to create an effective
police force.

Measurement of policing

A major handicap in police administration is the difficulty posed in

measurement of policing. No tangible tool to measure police performance has
as yet been devised. The problem is peculiar to the fields of crime control and
security operations. The object of the organisation is preventing crimes from
being committed and success of the policing can be measured only in relation to the
extent of the efforts being made to commit crimes, which are prevented. As
the factors of such an effort being unknown after the crimes are prevented,
effectiveness of the policing can never be measured. The results that meet the
eye, namely the successful protection of a sensitive target or the complete crime
prevention during a particular period can be the outcome for two different
reasons: either that none have attempted such malicho, in which case even the
least effective police could also have produced the same results or that an all-out
major attempt to commit crime has been prevented, which could not have been
achieved by anything less than the first-rate policing. Here, the same results
meet the eye for two different dimensions of the policing, ipso facto rendering
outcome a factor not related to the quality of the policing. Measurement of the
quality of crime investigation and maintenance of order are also equally
complex for different reasons. Policing in these fields largely depends upon
intangible factors like luck, surroundings and the willing cooperation of the
public. To superate these problems of measurement of policing qualities, a
police organisation depends upon comparing developments in the same periods
in preceding years. This is an unscientific method and gives unsatisfactory
results for various reasons. The crime rate or other policing challenges do not
remain static over time. These depend upon population, complexity of the
society, economic conditions, moral values, quality of leadership, political
conditions, prices, climate etc, none of which develop from any predictable
formula. The police perforce needs a tool to measure policing quality as a
control device. Until such a device is invented, police administrators have to
rely upon their subjective fancies to measure and control policing and assess the
work of their subordinates. Until a scientific device is formulated, the
heartburns and frustrations caused by erratic measurement of work and policing
qualities, wherein a few mealy-mouthed smarties always comer accolades at the
cost of efficient silent workers, will continue to precipitate. A sufficiently
efficient tool to measure policing qualities is the first priority in the task of
creating a new shape for the Indian police. The success achieved in this field
will decide the degree to which the Indian police can shed its old shoddy image.

Management in policing

For police administrators, knowledge of modern management principles

makes policing and police operations cheaper, effective and less demanding in
terms of time, place, manpower, equipments and other resources. A clinamen to
study and plan operations in terms of layout charts, time flow, span of control,
methods of programming of operations, motivational aspects, human
relationships, information flow, control methods, work analysis and
contingencies for emergencies must be ingenerate in policing whether it pertains
to raids, maintenance of order, crime control, crime investigation, intelligence collection,
security exercises or even quotidian police administration. Only the
pernickety exercise of management techniques will make police administration
meaningful, purposeful and useful in giving policing a direction and content.
The police cannot afford to sit back while tout le monde reaps the behoofs of the
latest tidings in the field of management techniques.

Housing and other facilities

Policing is a risky profession that draws antagonism and hatred by its very
nature. It involves round-the-clock duUes, often at odd hours, at odd places in
odd circumstances. Retaliation by criminals is a constant risk under which
policemen live. Their work constantly expose them to danger. The very nature
of their duties necessitates their being treated on a different footing to others in
the government. The security of housing and other facilities being generously
available to them is de rigueur. Indeed the spirit of the ancien regime remains
 undisturbed in matters of housing facilities for the police. However, a much
more liberal attitude in providing housing and other facilities to the police is
necessary to strengthen the Indian police and make policing more effective.

Reorganisation of police

The last three decades saw a tremendous expansion in the Indian police. For
lack of an organisational plan and the foresight to assess the future demands of
policing, an erratic growth has resulted. Organisational sensibilities like work-
load, unity of control, accountability, functional conveniences, span of control,
and information flow are never given the attention they need in building an
organisation. As a result, while a few posts in the police organisation are
overburdened with work, there are many which are sinecures without work or
accountability. The lopsided growth of the organisation generated acute likes
and dislikes for various police jobs. This made postings in the police
department, a matter of haute politique and high business. Naturally, probity
and objectivity are sacrificed to give precedence to survival and protection of
career interests. Corruption flourished. This may not be the sole reason for the
glissade of the standards of policing. Yet, it is a major cause. Rationalisation of
the police structure to bring a balance among various posts at the same rank
would certainly help to ameliorate the situation considerably. It would also help
to eliminate the wastage of government funds on unnecessary posts. The
justification for the creation of such de trop posts, that they fill slots to post
unwanted elements, does not hold ground in a no-nonsense and serious
department like the police. A systematic growth plan for balanced expansion is sine qua
non if the police department is to be of any relevance to the difficile
tasks ahead.

Professional knowledge

Policing is a field where professional knowledge is perforce in use. What is

at issue is not only the knowledge of law and procedures but a deeper insight
into their applications, necessary in diverse circumstances. A mind, alert to its
surroundings with an inexhaustible curiosity to know what is afoot and what is
the coup de fond of each development and its likely impacts on policing in
general and the work at hand in particular, is sine qua non for perficient
policing. This need entails special efforts to update professional and general
knowledge at all levels. Though there are training programmes, including in-
service training, in the Indian police, these are lacking in substance and quality.
They fail to impart the right knowledge to trainees and induce attitudinal
changes in them. The poor mental makeup is a common failing at all police
ranks in India. A lack of commitment to work, either in actual performance or
in supervision is the primary cause of this failing. A healthy police setup must
possess sound professional and general knowledge at all levels, from the
constabulary to the ranks of the Director General: this is the number one
priority.
Training in martial art

The Indian police is not paying sufficient attention to the need for physical
prowess, sturdiness and skill in martial art. The need for attention to these
factors during recruitment, basic training and in-service challenges is tout a fait
ignored. A healthy and sturdy police requires healthy and sturdy men and
officers, capable of taking up gauntlets and defending themselves when exposed
to comminations. The need can be sidelined only at the risk of weakening the
organisation. The police is often required to defend itself in circumstances
when unarmed and undefended. Policing involves performance of tough and
physically trying jobs that can only be performed when policemen and police
officers are physically and mentally fit. The police, aspiring to a bright future,
must attend to this need for its own good health with genuine seriousness.

Policing through people

The performance of the Indian police in utilising the services of the public is
far from desirable. Most parts of the country are yet to avail of the services of
the people as special police officers, as is provided by police regulations to assist in
policing. Wherever the services are availed, the potential is not made
use of to the full. The system of village police officers also is yet to fledge to
take off. The use of people as traffic wardens to assist traffic police is limited to
major cities of India. No police can be tout a fait self-contained. Involving the
public and obtaining its cooperation in policing is a necessary art which needs to
be carefully cultivated for making policing a success story in India. There is no
shortage of people among me public who would volunteer their services. Only,
the police must open its doors to such services and organise a system to make
such services really effective and useful.

Lack of planning in modernisation:

It is indubitable that neoteric communication, transport, weaponry, office

and other scientific systems arc musts for a feracious turnout of work in the
police. Only modernisation can equip the police for perficient action. The fact
is well realised in police circles sans an insight as to the what, wheres, hows and
whys. The passion for modernisation is not met with intellectual analysis of the
needs for modernisation. The result is a spasmodic modernisation without the
logical support to sustain modernisation systems. This has resulted in
enormous, wasteful expenditures on mal a propos gadgetry. India is yet to
develop to machinery to assess the needs of modernisation in the police and to
devise techniques to speed up the process. India is yet to make full use of
advanced computer facilities for the policing work; computerisation of
fingerprints is yet to reach a satisfactory phase. Use of helicopters for policing
is as yet a distant dream in India. Distant hearing and night watching devices
are similarly unknown.
Response time:

The response time of Indian police to a crisis call is unduly long when
compared to international standards. Efforts to shorten it in Delhi and a few
other places where terrorist strikes made shocking impacts, brought some
improvements. These are only exceptions. Otherwise, no serious thought is
given to the need for quick response time. The modernisation programmes
which should pave the path for improving the response time, seldom attend to
this salient need. The Bangalore city police spent liberally in 1991 on modem
communication gadgets; but it did not better its response time even by the
fraction of a second. Instances of such wasteful expenditure on modernisation
are available in other parts of the country also.

Need of sound human relationship

The current state of human relationships in Indian police does not bring
credit to the organisation. Relationships are brittle and mechanical without the
edge of human feelings. The relationship between different ranks turns out to
be soft or hard depending upon the contractual relationship established for
mutual advantage from time to time: it is rather a donor and recipient
relationship while soft and master and servant relationship while hard. There is
no genuine human concern and no sense of recognition of the other man as
another human being with more suo approach. The other's human qualities, sui
generis attributes and rare gifts are balked as inconsequential trash. Rank
differences superate other factors in moulding the brittle pattern of these
relationships. This is equally true among officers of the same rank. The model
of bad human relationship within the police bred an atmosphere of mutual
suspicion in spite of an outward show of belonging to the single family that the
police is.

Indian police leaders must think hard to decide whether the current model of
human relationship in the police is conducive to healthy policing or not. A
sound police organisation sprouts only on the terra firma of sound human
relationships between and within ranks, founded on genuine concern, mutual
respect, recognition, sympathy and understanding. Such relationship does not
perforce go against the police discipline and official command-obedience
functions. A sense of belonging and unity of purpose are spawned in the mind;
not in a stiff hierarchical order. The hierarchical order only defines the
relationship which is created in the minds of the people. Good relationship
strengthens the hierarchical order by making the order willingly acceptable to all
and thus lubricating its working. A subtle mental bond that links all men in an
organisation is its greatest asset. A sense of recognition from others and the
pride of belonging create a happy atmosphere in the organisation and improve
efficiency and output by bringing-in the elements of co-operation and unity of
purpose. Sadly, this is just the reverse in the maledict Indian police. Here,
human relationships are vitiated. Mutual suspicion and antagonism are the rule.
Men at higher ranks revel in hurling the pride of subordinates while
subordinates in turn wait for the right time to wreak of their revenge. In this
atmosphere of antagonism and undercuttings, the organisation and its objects
suffer, all its people suffer and the country suffers. This is where India stands at
present.

Warming-up of police recruits

The period of initiation is the most important and impressionable period in

the career-life of fresh recruits to the police department. The process of
warming-up is based on the psychological needs of human nature. New entrants
must be handled with utmost care to give them confidence and a feeling of
belonging at the incipient stage itself. A sense of confidence and belonging to
the organisation and an ingenerate love and respect for the higher-ups are the
substruction on which discipline grows. Efforts to inculcate discipline in a void
is like waiting for rain from the autumn sky. Indian police impresarios failed to
understand such finer nuances of administration when they copied the system of
the British Indian police. And so we now have a police system where discipline
is insisted on subordinates sans the conditions requisite for the discipline. The
recruits who enter the fold with open sensibilities and high expectations, anon
wither after braving for a while the brusque and insensitive conduct of their
higher ranks. These recruits continue thereafter to be constant enemies of the
higher ranks and the department for which they must continue to work for the
next three to four decades. A police department constituted of such members,
thanks to the shabby approach of the insensitive higher ranks in this most
impressionable period of the former's career-life, cannot turn out eximious
work. It is a tragedy that India neither spawned a police force of its ain superior
values nor copied the police force of the British vintage in its entirety with its
finer points, but cultivated instead a burlesque of the rough and mediocre
aspects of both.

Recognition as a motivating tool

The success of a police organisation depends upon to what extent it creates a

sense of pride and dignity in its members including the constabulary, so that
they realise and recognise themselves as useful and responsible members of the
police outfit and endeavour to live up to the image. The goal can be achieved
by proper modulation of perks, reward-and-punishment policy and rank-to-rank
relationship. The approach must create an impression that whatever a police
official gets as perks, rewards, praise, good treatment, respect, censure or
punishment, has been earned by his swink and potential. This makes the
proceedings a part of his service and seity and thus helps him to identify with
his work and conduct and ultimately with the organisation. This brings him a
sort of recognition and makes him more responsible to his work and
organisation. This is a far cry from the simulacrum of what is actually
 happening in Indian police. Recognition of good work as a rule is shied away
from. Every behoof is bestowed as a personal favour. Even a reward en regle
in recognition of eximious work is made to look like a favour. Meritorious and
distinguished medals too are divested of their distinction by being linked to
seniority and not actual merit. This is the reason why these medals carry no
meaning within the police organisation.

Remodelling the use of welfare funds

Police forces administer welfare funds for the benefit of their members. The
current approach of disbursing money from these funds to needy applicants
needs to be revised in line with the need to arouse a sense of pride and dignity
even in receiving help from the establishment. Much thought has to go into this
aspect to make the welfare funds useful to them without giving the impression
of charity. If the funds go to them as their rightful share, they would be put to
better use than as a charitable contribution. A newly structured police for the
new age certainly requires a fresh approach to the utilisation of police welfare
funds.

Needs for right people at the top

A job culture involutes basic beliefs and objects of the organisation,

professional ethics and degree of commitment to the aspirations of the
organisation, as laid down by precedence and practice. To what results
precedence and practice mould the job culture decide the success or otherwise
of the organisation. The decisions and conduct of those at the helm as the point
d'appui of police circles substruct the life lines of the organisation. It is
important that only right people reach the top. A headless organisation is better
than one headed by a degenerate weakling. This is why the policy of selection
and promotion at high levels plays a vital role in the growth of the organisation.
In a democratic age of self-seeking, short-term political leadership, where
sycophancy is the sole criterion for ascending the career ladder, the policy of
selection and promotion is misdight at best and motivatedly in the reverse gear
at worst, to the detriment of the growth and functioning of the organisation. All
those committed to the cause of police and effective policing must break the
trend and endeavour to provide a fresh lease of life for effective policing.

Bad models at high levels

There are myriad instances of unhealthy practices at the highest levels on the
current Indian police scene. A recent instance is a notorious police chief of one
of the states of India with his polio-struck wife, being taken to court on the eve
of his retirement from service by a prominent social worker for allegedly
defrauding the public and a spastic society by defalcation of huge amounts of
money, collected by sale of charity entertainment tickets in the name of the
spastic society. It is a different story that the alleged escroc succeeded in
 silencing the social worker through police pressure and ensured that the case fell
through for lack of evidence. The point is to what sad levels men reaching high ranks in
maledict independent India can stoop to make a few dirty bucks.
Fortunately, the nithing, malgre lui dance afore men who count in politics, could
not get an extension of service ayont his superannuation in 1990. Such
instances of mauvaise sujet at high ranks abound in Indian police scene.

Discipline is a potential syndetic force of the police organisation. It defines

all parameters of the force and makes its hierarchical order meaningful and
purposeful, the command-obedience relationship sharp-edged and functional
conduct pernickety. This pollent instrument devised as an esemplastic factor for
the police force during the British era has now become a demonic evil in the
Indian situation and gorges its vitality. It is used as a cover by the people in
higher ranks to indulge in wrongdoing and to silence the conscientious few in
the lower ranks from protesting. It is also a gleg cover to promote the interests
of juniors who support their evil deeds by sycophancy and personal loyalty; and
to suppress those juniors of inner strength, individual pride, independent mind
and argute conscience. A subtle hatred for superior qualities of the subordinates
is patent in the Indian police force of the post-independent vintage. The juniors
who are perspicaciously inferior in intellectual qualities and other superior
attributes are valued and helped to superate others on the career ladder.
Perchance, an innate inferiority complex in police leadership and a
consectaneous fear of weaknesses being excoriated before those lower in their
ranks bother them au fond. Another farce carried out behind the facade of
discipline is that of an officer forcing a subordinate to meet personal ends
ranging from getting a regular supply of vegetables to even forcing to marry his
daughter or wife's sister. Here, police ranks display exceptional unity of
purpose in helping a colleague to corner the subordinate who shows the
hardihood to go against his senior's desire. In the process, four-square
youngsters in the organisation drop out or are cornered and those impair to
higher tasks scale the ladder of the organisation, thus weakening the
organisation ab intra. There are myraid paradigms of such fearless officers who
acted upon their consciences and lost their seniority through catenated false
annual reports.

A Commissioner of Police of the capital of a certain state in India who came

back to police work after languishing in a sinecure on deputation for nearly a
decade is an interesting instance of self-promotion by false methods. In spite of
his poor record, he succeeded by pulling political strings to get posted as Police
Commissioner of the state capital. Despite his utter incompetence, lack of
administrative acumen and an enfested relationship with all of his Deputy
Commissioners, he succeeded in continuing in the job for more than two years
and even manipulated undue promotions for himself without disturbing his
plump posting. He is known to bend backward at the cost of all values, pride
and police interests to aggrace men in power and to brazenly gasconade, that
none can superate him in the game. He did ascend the ladder of career ayont his scope
otherwise and bragged about the possibility of becoming the state police
chief in the early part of 1990 itself. He will certainly supercede many
competent heads to head the state police force someday if not in 1990 in the
existing triste police culture. Such a trend frustrates competent and principled
officers and makes way for a gradual glissade of the value system in the setup.
If police officers at the helm do not vindicate their organisation from the
unscrupled onslaughts of such selfish interests ab intra, none would come
forward to do the job for them and the police would die a slow death.

Public image of police

What me Indian police inspires in the public is fear and hatred, not trust,
respect and love. This is the greatest single failing of the Indian police. A
police force thus feared and hated is irrelevant in a democracy. The argument
that fear is a necessary constituent in policing is not based on the right
understanding of human psychology and the basic tenets of policing work. The
police does stand on a different footing from the general public while exercising
policing powers. The different footing, perforce is based on trust, respect, love
and consectaneous healthy awe, not on fear and hatred. The image incorpsed
with healthy awe is more lasting and pollent than that based on hateful fear.
While the former inspires genuine cooperation and willing subjection to police
authority, the latter only forces such subjection till the fear lasts. An argument
advanced in favour of fear in policing is that the strains of fear are deep in the
very nature of policing. This again is based on a mendacious notion, about
policing and belike on the preposterous practices of the present police'outfit.
The police is not synonymous with fear. A smiling and- helpful police is the
model of democratic policing. The police is not the enemy of the people,
especially in a democracy. Policing involves enforcement of order for the good
of many which may sometimes involve inconvenience to a perverted few. The
job if performed rightly must win trust, love and respect of the hoi polloi for the
police. Only the misuse of power and a supercilious approach to the exercise of
the powers would antagonise the plebeian and earn his implacable haired. The
exercise of police powers with absolute humility is quite possible. An approach
of service to the general public renders the exercise of police powers, a sensible
and circumspect task and avoids harshness. The performance inspires trust, love
and respect and not fear and hatred. Only if people learn that police really care
for their well-being, percase, no other government agency would be as loved
and respected as the police. Only the police should show its good intentions and
convince the public about its trustworthiness. Nothing the Indian police does
now helps to create this image. It is high time that serious efforts are made in
this direction.

What is basically required for the Indian police is a tough, mature and no-nonsense image
in place of the present fear. The police organisation must create
an impression of strength of character and infrangible probity. Only from this
height, can the police discharge its sacred duties of protecting and maintaining
order in national life. This is now a far cry from the invious misdight of the
Indian police. The leap from the current glidder field to what should be is not
an impossible feat. Each step ahead must be carefully laid to make steady,
albeit slow progress towards the difficile goal. It is an attempt worth making. It
is an opuscule worth doing.

Need of sound mind at higher levels

A factor that seriously affects the morale of a disciplined force like the
police is that of men affected by psychological disorders of inferiority complex,
holding posts from where they can affect the career of the subordinates. This is
a very serious situation where distorted minds hold reigns of the career of
thousands of subordinates with many at very senior levels. The mental disorder
brings a psychological imbalance by which the people in high ranks learn to
interpret subordinates' normal conduct perversely as surquedry; normal
reporting or explanation appears like an intrigue and lough posture appears like
insubordination. The extra modum fear of insecurity, inspired by the feeling of
inferiority is so pollent that it does not permit cunctation in striking back at the
source of the comminalion with all strength at disposal. This makes retaliation
an ever pensile threat to the career of the subordinates. And the threat, sine
prole, is true in the police. This makes people of sound mind, a must in
responsible positions. For an organisation like the police, the need of a sound
mind is more basic than any other faculty.

The'inferiority complex seriously manifests when the pusillanimous person

troubled with the disorder is newly posted to a responsible position after
marcescere in a sinecure post for a long time. The metabasis from the void to
the strains and straints of responsibilities breaches his inner confidence and the
disorder of neltlcsome suspicion on everything around raises its ugly head.
There are any number of such examples in the Indian police.

The police Commissioner referred to somewhere in this article is a

kenspeckle paradigm for the havoc created by such a disorder. Police
administrators at the sconce must keep constant pernoctation on such disorders
in the interests of the police administration.

Salvaging operation

The situation can be salvaged by clearing the cobwebs from the entrails of
the Indian police. There is a catena of self-motivated officers in key positions in the
police who unknowingly brought about the degringolade of the Indian
police in the post-democratic era. They corrupted the police atmosphere, set
wrong precedences, encouraged self-indulgence, pulled down its no-nonsense
tough image and reduced it to its present cadaverous existence. These elements
should be sidelined to absorb men of probity to refurbish and rebuild the police
setup. Only really capable impresarios can pull the Indian police out from its
present fix.

The future of India as a country depends upon the strengths and weaknesses
of its police. Defence forces are relevant to the existence of India insomuch as
defending its borders and protecting Us system of government. But the
relevance of the police is more meaningful, for, here, the very existence of India
as a nation is an issue. The significance of the police in the survival of the
nation is often forgotten somewhere between the width of the civil
administration and the depth of the defence forces. A highly competent and
disciplined police force, percase, is the greatest asset of any country. Every
patriotic Indian must aspire to that. The police must be powerful. En attendant,
it must be a disciplined and committed force, a no-nonsense, tough outfit. It
saves the country from all disasters; it supports the administration in civil rule
and works as its watch dog. It works as a subsidiary force in support of the
military during war. If need be, it can run the administration when civil rule
breaks down and function as an armed force when the military fails the country.
The importance of this great tool of governance is yet to be duly recognised. It
is high time that it is done now and. the Indian police is exemed from its
nauseating subculture and gets a fresh life of vitality and strength. It is really
heartrending to see the swinging police in its present mauvais ton, especially for
an insider who is a part of this great institution, entrusted with the high objects
of protecting public life. Yes, something should be done to save the police. The
question is who should begin the process, and where, when and how? Who will
bell the demonic cat to bring it to its senses?

THREE

HUMANISING THE POLICE –THE

ROLE OF ITS LEADERS

I have made a ceaseless effort

Not to ridicule, not to bewail,
Not to scorn human actions,
But to understand them.

These words of Spinoza give expression to the subjacent current of human

responses that constitute humanism, that as the common denominator of all natural
human activities, breeds an environment of facile fusion of hearts and minds
wherein sprout further causes for human evolution as manifested in diverse fields
of human activities including policing.
 Humanism involves a sense of belonging to mankind with all its qualities and
limitations, that breeds an intense urge to respond to the joys and sufferings of other
beings. The chief attributes of humanism are a sixth sense that accommodates and
cooperates in the common interests of mankind and an uncanny power to perceive
the self as an indivisible part of the larger scheme of the universe in the pattern of
Atma imbibed in Paramatma. It is a concept that instills kindness and tenderness
in an individual, elegance and classicism in a culture, softness and civility in a
civilisation and concern and participation in a society. It is a transpicious crucible
wherein the negative discharges of evolution murl to be transformed into efficient
propellants of natural evolution.

Humanism is an eerie solvent which causes depravity and selfishness to

effloresce as the beatitude of kindness and tenderness. It ennobles a caractere with a
sense of levity and concinnity, substructed in its environment and leaves an
organisation in excelsis of its potentials. Humanism renders the organisation
germane to human activities either as a service-oriented unit or as an establishment
of human interplay by rendering it sensitive to the joys and sufferings of human
beings and thereby making it responsive to their needs and efforts. The salubrious,
mellowing effects of humanism are beautifully brought out by William Wordsworth
in "Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Titem Abbey".

The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me, with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.

Though policing is a human service au fond, its methods are strikingly inhuman
in India due to poor leadership and a failure of our planners to tread paripassu with
the amble in the clime of man management and policing techniques. The tragedy
of the Indian police is that its means and ends do not amate. The querimony that
the feral methods of the Indian police are more contemptible and anti-social than
the criminal acts they are supposed to control cannot be dismissed glibly as
inaccurate in prevailing circumstances. Our police system has grown of late to be
a monster deprived of all strains of humanism by its perennial exposure to the
inhuman methods of both the criminals and policing. It is true that association
moulds character. The tenor of immane policing methods inextricably obfuscates
and dislimns the strains of humanism in rerum natura. The issue can be dealt on
two fronts; adopting the latest developments in police techniques to make it a more
civilized operation and shaping the police environment to make it less sensitised to
inhuman exposures. As the police leaders themselves are victims of this infaust
mould of mind, tremendous organisational efforts may be necessary to refract the
fallouts and reinstate humanism in the police. Should the police conform to
 standards of humane comportment and methods a la hauteur de its desinent goals,
policing would become a meaningful and relevant service to society.

The test of the Police as a humanised organisation is its acceptance by the society
as a couthie associate, so that no child is scared of hearing the name of a policeman
and no agrestic folks, take to their heels at the mere sight of one. It is a wonder how
people manage to accept the police - whom they perceive as an embodiment of
bestiality, incivility and inanity - as guardians of their life, honour and property.
The Indian police has cohabited long enough with its disrepute. A decision anon to
furbish its image as a humanised setup though late, will not be intempestive as policing is
as yet far from having its relevance to society luxated though its inhuman
methods are fast eating up its credibility. Its leaders cannot afford any more the
exuberance of complacency if the police must stand up to its expectations as the
peace-keeper of society and assert to resile to its deeper human strains. The process
of showing the police its roots which are obfuscated by the lounderings of time and
its own working methods must begin anon. The wherewithal of affecting the
transformation is varied and covers such disparate avenues as recruitment, training,
environment, exposures, man management, policing methods, uniforms,
organisation, criminal laws, living and working conditions, work pressure, image,
public relation techniques etc. A police leader should effectively cover all these
aspects in his plan should he wish to see his police humanised.

Police recruitment

The human aspect is the fulcrum of policing. Policing is primarily latitant

human interaction in the perennial luctation to safeguard the security and rights of
the common man and the human quality in the force determines effectiveness and
vitality of the performance. Human resources policy as a device of selecting human
stuffs needs careful handling at the highest level to attract right people to the fold.

The present Indian environment of ruthless concours, impeached with a

degringolade of values has made human resources management a farce. The
wherewithal of human resources management like recruitment, promotions,
transfers, rewards, punishments, etc. are no more employed for maximum benefit
of the organisation. Self-interests have undermined quality and character and
organisational interests are subordinated to personal behoofs. Though this
proclivity is prevalent in all fields in India, its adverse effects are kenspeckle in the
police organisation as the line-system of the organisation makes the ingenuity of
the human resources management a factor having direct and immediate bearing on
the efforts of humanising the police.

An earnest effort from the highest level to infuse the creme de la creme,
characterised by genuine human stuff, probity and commitment may be the
foremost need of the police. The prevalence of police administration over general
administration in the survival of a nation as a democratic and orderly country may
necessitate changes in recruitment policy. This is to ensure that only those with a
 deep natural humane disposition step in to the police so that the arrogance and
savagery, bred by its environment can do little harm and the tenue of humanism
will continue alongside policing work.

Proper training

The chief cause of the police seldom being humane in India is its ineffective
training facilities. In spite of adequate infrastructures available for police training
in India, these centres largely fail to offer quality to the training to humanise a recruit
adequately to stand up to the challenges of the temulence of the arrogant and feral
environment that policing breeds. An overhaul of the extant training facilities in
terms of quality, content and character in favour of humanised policing practices
is inevitable to keep the police excubant against the depravity of the modem society.
The psychology faculty of the centre should endeavour to build character and
strengthen human fibres. The training centres should lay emphasis on an attitudinal
change in the recruits and develop the skills of humanised policing. The training
centres should give the impression of being temples, dedicated to humanising the
police apart from actually being so.

Exposure to artistic activities

C. Kluckhohm and H. A. Murray said, "Personality is the totality of a man's

knowledge, motives, values, beliefs, goal-seeking patterns and psychological
makeup of an individual and include environmental and hereditary factors". The
substratum of individuality is moulded of complex building blocks derived ab extra
and ab intra to the persona. The same view is supported by Argyris when he says,
"Behaviour occurs as an interaction between organism and environment" in the
simulacrum of Prakrithi devolving on Purusha to create the Universe. The
environmental aspect as a wherewithal, open to police leaders, calls for designs that
can humanise the police. The environment, gravid with human comportances like
tenderness, elegance, civility and concern, impinges upon its subjects to make them
conform to its influences. A police leader can humanise his force by exposing it to
those influences.

The strenuous nature of policing hardens the police in spirit and mind. A
measure of creative activities like literary interactions, exposure to poetry and fine
arts, musical performances etc besprent in the precious spare-time between policing
hours intenerates the man behind the police facade and resiles him to his natural
human tendencies. Artistic activities counterpose the damage done to the man by
the role-play of policing and open him up to the halcyon clime of an ideal and
imaginary world, far removed from the hard and brusque realities of police life and
makes his life tanto uberior.

Exposure to social service activities

The exposure of the police to social service activities is the celestial surgeon
 who enraces human mellowness and dignity to the police. Interaction with people
from the plane of oblation sinks the policeman from his inflated self to the roots of
his genuine feelings and concerns and conditions him to respond to the vicissitudes of the
environment. It opens up a new vista of feelings and experiences that make
life richer and meaningful au reste sensitisation of the self.

The social service activities, as a form of servitude to mankind and a voluntary

involvement with the people, absterge the temulence of power and abraid latitant
human tendencies in the policeman to bring to the surface his pristine self. It is left
to the police leaders to include opulent social service schemes in their human
resources development programmes if their force is to be genuinely humanised.

Better treatment of subordinates

Rogers in "On Becoming A Person" says, "The more fully the individual is
understood and accepted, the more he tends to drop the false fronts with which he
has been meeting life, and the more he tends to move in a direction which is
forward". The conviction of fair treatment and concern for human dignity in the
policeman devolves the comports beneath. An atmosphere of respect, dignity and
fairness resiles his self to its pristine charm of innocence and couthie disposition.
Au contraire, the strains of humiliation, contempt and scorn drive him to catharize
his frustrations and indignities on both those lower in the hierarchy and the members
of the public who come to his doors au desespoir for redressal at the cutting-edge
level of the policing. The spite and the feral indignities he inflicts on those at his
mercy would be pro rata to those he is subjected to by his leaders.

A policeman shabbily instated in his organisation develops a poor self-image.

Solley and Murphy analyse this when they say "He perceives, responds, acts and
communicates in terms of his complex self-image by trying to be consistent with
it; too negative a self-image leads to adjustment mechanisms". A policeman, proud
of his self and work is created by respect to his individual dignity that develops a
confidence about humane strains subjacent in his person and dares him to betray
the human responses that are so natural to his entrails and make the Police
environment in the country besprent with the milk of human attributes like kindness,
tenderness, elegance and civility.

Exemplary punishments for inhuman acts

Motivation and deterrence are opposite facets of the same coin that pays for
attitudinal change. Deterrence, although an extra force to the system, is an effective
wherewithal in materialising mobility in an intended direction as an addendum to
disparate motivation factors. Efforts to humanise the police call for the apposite
employment of deterrence to inhumane acts by way of exemplary punishments.

The prevalence of means over the ends should be made the cardinal principle
of policing. The ends, however eximious they be, should not find recognition by
the police if the means adopted are mean and deplorable. All inhuman acts by the police
should be met with heavy punishments and an atmosphere of social
ostracisation of such elements should be created in the force. The realisation that
the police are ordinary people and no criminal act committed in discharge of official
duties would extricate them from the ensuing liability should be made crystal clear.

An ingenerate sense of regard for people, oblivious to their locus standi in the
soc il ladder, can be generated in the police by installing a mortal fear of inhuman
acts through exemplary punishments.

Elimination of violent methods from policing

The fact that policing is a human service au fond does not justify adoption of
feral methods in policing. Adoption of violence and savagery by the police gives
legitimacy to such methods in the public eye and thus weakens the orderly fabric
of society. Violent methods like employment of third degree in interrogation to
obtain quick results, in preference to the tedium of swink't investigation, weaken
the image of the police, already weighed under by pressures of work.

Adoption of scientific methods in policing helps in humanising the police. It

saves the police from the antilogy of committing criminal acts to meet the ends of
justice. All efforts at humanising the police prove infructuous until the police
continues to be at the mercy of violent methods for results.

A genuine effort at humanising the police should begin with the adoption of
modem policing techniques and scientific methods to instil sophistication and
accuracy in policing. Old habits die hard. Vigorous efforts to mundify old nasty
habits should find priority as a substruction on which the edifice of efforts of
humanising the police should be built.

Elimination of constabulary

The constabulary which forms the backbone and cutting-edge of the Indian
policing and which wields a real authority over the populace is a lowly paid,
modestly educated and non-elite mass of uniformed workers. The authority they
wield makes them fearsome while their low status in society prevents them from
commanding empathy, respect and legitimacy. Authority sans empathy, respect and
legitimacy decidedly proves to be a deadly substructure that breaks the conduit
between the organisation and the public and renders the organisation dyspathetic
to the aspirations of the humanity at large. The constabulary with its intramural
enlightenment and responsibility finds the intricacies of civil and comme il faut
comportance rather peregrine to its gout.

In the circumstances, the rank of sub-inspector with its present level of minimum
education and status in society should form the cutting-edge level with no policing
powers and responsibilities devolved beneath that level. The comport of the cutting-edge
level of the police decides its image because of its perennial interaction
with the general public. Sub-inspectors as the cutting-edge level functionaries must
perform the bulk of police tasks like beat patrolling, station house duties,
preliminary interrogations and other investigation assistance that brings the police
to actual contact with the public. The officials with their education and social status
can be more civil and courteous to the general public.

Change of uniform to white

A change in the existing police uniform is an issue worth assessing as a device

to humanise the police force. The present khaki uniform inspires a mood of
arrogance and savagery by its psychological association with power and repression.
A change to white may prove to be for the better in intenerating the psyche of the
police. The strategy in selecting a new uniform is to imbibe a sense of cleanliness,
levity, balance and probity and to inspire a couthie disposition in the force.

Change in criminal laws

A few glaring anomalies and erroneous provisions of the extant criminal laws
in India contributed to the easy reclame of criminals from the clutches of the law
in many cases and the harassment of innocent persons by the police in some other
cases. The loopholes in the criminal laws have to be plugged if crime administration
is to be humanised and command a semblance of public respect and confidence.
Intelligent adaptations in the extant criminal laws to interdict inhuman policing
methods and provide wherewithals for facile crime administration are the needs of
the hour.

The policeman or the judicial officer under whose custody a person is kept under
detention must be made responsible by name for the timely release of the detenue
with the provision that if detention exceeds the period provided by law, the
concerned officer is liable for proceedings for the unlawful detention sans the
privilege of exemptions for acts performed in official colour. Also, all cases of
violence and physical outrage committed in police custody should be made
punishable with exemplary penalties by special legislations. Such outre measures
may bring an end to shocking inhumane acts committed in the similitude of policing
in some quarters and save the Indian police from acute public resentment.

The current bail provisions of Indian criminal law are a source of acute
embarrassment to police officers with criminals arrested by them after weeks or
months of stupendous efforts being let off by the judiciary on bail only to facilitate
them to jump the bail. All discretions with police and judiciary regarding bail should
be taken away with only a select few offences of enormous gravity made
nonbailable. This will restrict both the police and the judiciary from showing favours to
some criminals en revanche to favours and bring mechanical accuracy
.to bail provisions. This measure may be found a path-breaker in preventing the
misuse of criminal laws and the inhuman play of favours and disfavours to
criminals.

Civil liberty cells

External controls must walk pan passu with ingenerate eneraty in the act of
self-disciplining in view of the human propensity to unwittingly stray from the
chosen path. Institution of civil liberty cells in each district and metropolitan city
as advisory conseil to the police chief of the region with local civil liberty
champions as its members to draw attention to specific instances of inhuman
conduct by subordinate officers would meet the need of control ab extra to keep
the police on pemoctation against inhuman comportment. The civil liberty cell
should be a dynamic part of the police administration in the region and its
observations should set in motion a process of verification and peremptory action.
Though subjecting police to the scrutiny of an outside setup may appear a retrograde
measure, it helps the assuefaction of the policing methods to human comports in
rerum natura.

Better service conditions

People can afford the luxury of humaneness when they are insulated from the
quotidian diversions of their occupational hazards. A delectable service
atmosphere mellows their responses to those around them. They begin to see the
world in a better light, in conformity with the atmosphere around them and try to
share these pleasant feelings with those they come in contact with. The levity of
the environment land the absence of strains from the service-front facilitate their
opening-up to give vent to their latitant human contents.

An effort to humanise the police cannot ignore the need to improve service
conditions to make the police proud to be enraced in the vocation. The sense of
contentment generated by the service atmosphere devolves to the public that
interacts with the police. In addition, the public leams to hold the police in esteem
in conformity with its improved service conditions and sophistication. This
interaction between the police and the public can be a sound substruction for
humane policing.

Better living conditions

A reasonably good standard of living helps the police to rise above the physical and
security need-levels to social and higher need-levels in the need-hierarchy
outlined by McGregor and have the mental space for wider interests like human
concerns of kindness, tenderness, elegance and civility. A low living standard
retards the police image and esteem in society.

It is necessary to make the police financially bein by adequately compensating

for the risks and hazard factors of their jobs to attract the best men to its fold apart
 from securing them against financial distractions. A feeling of condign
compensation and contentment is certain to raise the police above physical and
security need-levels to give free expression to natural human tendencies.

Lighter work

All creations in their fraicheur and nature's bounty are kind and tender and
elegant. The strains of the environment cause inquietude in nature's balance and
leads to the obfuscation of a few precious sheens from its innards. It manifests in
loss of human factors in man and his mental space turns intenible of human qualities
by environmental strains such as work-pressures.

The Indian police is weighed down with an impossible quantum of

responsibilities and tasks. This work-pressure adversely affects the mental balance
apart from depriving those tasks from the attention due. It is impossible to expect
a man bogged down with lourd responsibilities and tasks to spare his time for the
niceties of human qualities.

An important measure in humanising the police is to scale down the

work-pressure on it to a bearable level. An element of levity in work makes the
work environment dulcet and provides an adequate mental space to devolve on the
exuberances of human comportations.

Exclusion of social legislations

. The propensity of weighing the police with the enforcement of all types of
legislations has become a major hazard to effective policing. It is emphatically so
with social legislations which pass out of our legislative house sans cohibition.
These progressive measures are inherently controversial in nature and their
enforcement by the police weakens its credibility as an agency of serious business
and peremptory order. It is plauditory to conceive of the police as a vehicle of
progressive measures. In the process, however, the police is certain to put both its
credibility and professionalism in jeopardy as these social legislations lack the
depth and gravity required to enforce them. Assiduous enforcement may be
perceived as inhuman acts of high-handedness and harassment of certain sections
of the society. It is not in the interest of the process of humanising the police to
expose it to civil contecks that are gravid with the malengine of expropriating from all
those concerned from human concerns. The exclusion of social legislations from
the ambit-of normal police work will save the police organisation from the
embarrassment of handling issues for which it is not equipped either mentally or
professionally or organisationally. This measure will exeme the police organisation
from unwarranted pressures that add to the dehumanisation process and also
enhances its legitimacy as the guardian of order and security of human interests.

Exposures to public relations techniques

 Though efforts have been en train to ameliorate the image of the Indian police
for a long time, nothing substantial could be achieved due to amateurish handling.
The present Indian police managers have their image development wherewithal
limited to issuing occasional press statements while image development has
become a highly advanced field of specialisation with perennial scope for further
advancements. In view of the considerable significance of the image for successful
police operations, the wherewithal of image building in the police is required to be
updated with the latest techniques, applied by professionals in the field.

It does not suffice if the police is humanised; the police also should appear
humanised. While public relations professionals can handle the job from the
organisational level, an insight to the police about the rudiments of public relations
is sine qua non if it is to appear humanised to the public eye. This necessitates, the
exposure of the police to the latest public relations techniques at regular intervals
to imbibe the skill of civility in interacting with the public.

In-service image

The proclivity for role-play is a major driving force in the process of motivation.
People who enter a new setup, look to their new environment for the role they should
assume? and the setup renders them homo colons in conformity to its own image. ^
People joining a humanised organisation play the role of humaneness to fulfil their
esurient urge to identify with the setup. The in-service image of an organisation is
a powerful springboard that sets it to actuate that image.

An in-service image as a humane setup is de rigueur if humanising the police

is to grow as a tradition. The very reputation of the police as a humane setup limits
the options of the insiders to act antilogous to its reputation and thus exert an invisd
pressure to rise to the expectations of the organisation that owns them. The process
of building a humanised image ab infra requires the assistance of skeely
image-building technicians and adroit operations by police leaders. This forms the
drsinent and vital stage in humanising the police.

McGregor identifies man as "rational-emotive.. inextricably interwoven" and

defines motivation as "an emotional force". According to Irving Sarnoff,
"motivation is an internally operative tension-producing stimulus thai provokes the
individual to act in such a way as to reduce the tension". Plato traces the origin of
man's behaviour to knowledge from the head as he identified prominently in
politicians, emotion from the blood as identified prominently in soldiers and desire
from the stomach as identified prominently in businessmen. MoDougall in "Instinct
Theory of Hormic Psychology" speaks about sensory, motivational and emotional
aspects of behaviour. He says that environmental situations provide the stimuli
necessary to arouse a particular behaviour in a cognitive (sensory) aspect;
goal-directed behaviour is caused by the conative (motivational) aspect while an
affective (emotional) aspect arouses its own behaviour. Man should be approached
from two levels inter alia for an attitudinal change from conviction which according
to Woolbert, "is an appeal to reason" and persuasion which "is an appeal to
emotions". The role of police leaders in humanising the police lies in emotionally
integrating it with humanistic causes by esoteric organisational moves to supervene
a rational appeal to conviction by training and creation of environments in policing
where a man is treated as a man imprimis in spite of all his foibles or strengths.

Humanistic propensions in a hierarchical setup like the police should permeate

from above should the organisation be humanised and its lower strata identify it
with their organisational self. The police leaders should set standards of'human
comportment for others in the organisation to make it the substruction of
organisational behaviour.

Policing is an exercise revolving around the fulcrum of humanism while

humanism is the foundation on which the edifice of policing should stand. Policing
is a crime sans human concerns to support it. The infaust polarisation of dulcet
human propensities from nefandous policing activities in the present police setup
is a serious organisational malady that renders the very policing system of India
counter-productive and as a perpetuator of licensed crimes. Policing powers are a
trust invested in the police for exercise in the general interests of the people. The
police loses all its claims to power, the moment it sinks its concerns for people and
its policing activities become depravity in purls naturalibus. Humanism is the
ineluctable other side of the policing. Rather, policing is the negative discharges de
rigueur to the upward thrust of human interests. The Indian policing with its
obfuscating backfire sans the upward thrusts of human concerns may sink in the
Bay of Bengal some day unless its leaders shed their indolence to vitalise the police
with genuine human qualities.

FOUR

ORGANISATIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE

CHALLENGES
BEFORE THE POLICE FOR THE NEW AGE

It is India's good fortune that its fabric of law and order withstood the onslaught
of growing complexity of the Indian society lest fragile is its system of policing.
The fact that the police systems in a few neighbouring countries of Asia and Africa
are worse cannot be a solace as the political, social and economical structures
forming the cornerstones of those countries have tout a fait different backgrounds
and value systems from ours. India is a crucible wherein the dynamics and
relevance of democracy in the third world are experimented with. The Indian police
 system must necessarily meet the latitant aspirations of the democracy in fulfilling
its desinent objective of maintaining internal order arid security. This dimension
added to the problems of policing in India. The Indian polity confronts its police
with ever greater challenges while affording it an increasingly liimled wherewithal
to do so. The Indian police system dodders while taken on ride by the shocks of the
growing complexity of the Indian society and its relevance to society is luxated
in the seemingly unending luctation for relevance. The tenor of the setback lies in
the failure to foresee and continuously keep the system one step ahead.

The hazard of the Indian-police lies in this immobility of its organisational

structure. The existing police system is utterly devoid of any adjustment mechanism
that keeps it relevant to the zeitgeist. A time-to-time review Ad concomitant
updating of the police organisation become sine qua non the cfactimstances,
particularly while me nascent democracy lounder the policing system of India remis
velisque, quite oblivious of the futuristic kiaugh. A systematic study of the policing
in India with an adequate pemoctation to screen the latest researches and findings
in relevant fields of social and political systems, science and technology in
reorienting the police organisation and administration is an essential parameter in
the vital exercise.

A police setup worth its salt should meet the specific needs of the policing. The
police setup must necessarily be raucle in its frame to be capable of absorbing the
shocks to which it would often be exposed. Secondly, motive factors should be
substructed in the body of the organisation as sound motivation alone can make
policing a purposeful activity. This should be reinforced with external motive
factors that can be infused to the organisation e re nata. Thirdly, the system should
be organised so as to generate optimism and confidence expropriis to excudit the
magical entrainement. Another important aspect that should weigh lourd in
evolving an effective police organisation is evolving a mechanism whereby every
police officer or unit is put in charge of a specific job matching his or its competence
and aptitude. An element of levity should be brought to policing so that the work
in hand can be attended to with genuine involvement by each police officer. Another
strategic principle of a healthy police organisation is having absolute faith and
giving full responsibilities to subordinates with a concomitant reward and
punishment system that follow at the heels. Any attempt to disturb the balance of
faith, full responsibility and reward and punishment system is certain to fell the
organisation into desuetude. The extant conception of collective responsibility
through a chain of command has gone passe by its propensity to demotivate the
real workers due to the corrupt ambitions of those at higher levels in the chain of
command. Policing has grown of late to be such an independent field of
specialisation that it is tout de force impossible for a mortal being to be proficient
in even a single aspect of policing. It is rather a folly to ween a police officer as
being able to handle all aspects of policing though at different times. Hence, the
need of specialisation-oriented policing. The present managerial world is
increasingly realising the importance of human resources as organisational inputs.
Unless all-out efforts are made to inhaust to police the creme de la creme of the
 country with exceptional attributes of probity, intelligence and commitment and
impart eximious and purposeful training to bring out the best of each, no efforts at
updating the organisation can bring about a sempiternal transformation in the setup.
The fact that policing can be successful only with popular cooperation, focuses the
attention of the police organisation on the needs of building up its image. Although
efforts are already afoot towards building up the image of the police, the depths of
the possibilities are yet to be fully explored and exploited. A scientific approach in
this score will make policing tanto uberior. Also, the scope for scholarly and
intellectual activities in policing will make policing multi-dimensional and add to
its effectiveness. The fremit reception given to intellectual activities in some quarters of
policing may not go down too well with the future police planners. The
future police organisation and administration should cater to the need of intellectual
activities.

The present police organisation and administrative system have to be

overhauled in the near future as the ineffectiveness of the extant system becomes
increasingly obvious with the flaws in the edifice starting to gape wider. The areas
wherein restructuring may be desirable and the thrusts sine qua non to stuff the
hiatus valde deflendus to have a featous police setup, quite capable of facing the
challenges of the future are discussed tout court below.

Exclusion of social legislations

The proclivity of weighing the police with reinforcement of all types of

legislations has become a major hazard to effective policing. While the proliferation
of legislations in independent India made it impossible even to keep track of their
numbers, it is senseless to ween the police as being able to enforce them all. The
stupendous task of enforcing these legislations adversely affects the effectiveness
of the police and corrodes its credibility. This is emphatically so with social
legislations which pass out of our legislative houses sans cohibition. These
progressive measures are inherently controversial in nature and their enforcement
by the police weakens its credibility as an agency of serious business and
peremptory order. It is plauditory to conceive of the police as a vehicle of
progressive measures, but in the process, is certain to put both its credibility and
professionalism into jeopardy as the social legislations lack depth and gravity to
enforce them and assiduous enforcement may ricochet as an outcry of harassment
and high-handedness. It is not in the interest of the country to expose its police to
such civil contecks and suffer it thereby.

India can have an independent social policing system under the social welfare
ministry to which police officers with a flair for progressive measures may be
deputed. The social policing system as a professional enforcement agency of the
social welfare ministry can do an effective job in enforcing progressive social
legislations with all their nuances, by fully devolving on it while saving the police
organisation from the embarrassment of handling issues to which it is not equipped
either mentally, professionally or organisationally. This measure will exeme the
 police organisation from unwarranted pressures and enhance its legitimacy in
handling serious security and law and order issues.

Specialisations in policing

The growth of police functions as adnated to present life-style of increasing

complexity is enormous of late with policing slinking to the vitals of all streaks of social
and nonsocial living. Policing has become a high-tech affair these days with
scopes for further advancements. Each major activity of policing like maintenance
of order, investigation of crimes, collection of intelligence and security-operations
have assumed such an independent status of nonesuch expertise and
professionalism that these fields being inhered is neither desirable nor feasible. Nor
in the circumstances, does shifting a functionary from one field of expertise to the
other help his overall performance. Anfractuosity in any one of these fields of
specialisation for life is becoming a requisite as time goes by.

The futuristic policing of India must have its subordinate police as professionals
in a given field of specialisation, say maintenance of order, crime investigation,
intelligence collection or security operation with synergy manifesting only at higher
levels. So, India may have independent law and order police, detective police,
special police and security police, each separately recruited and trained for
professionalism and expertise in their respective fields. Officers from all these
specialised fields should be eligible to rise to general policing at higher levels on
the basis of a pro rata quota system for promotions.

Parallel crime administration

"The increased preoccupation of the police with law and order and security issues
in view of the growing cataclysmic activities in the country has adversely affected
effective, crime administration of late. Police stations have become registering
stations as far as crime administration is concerned. The time of the local police is
fordone with immediate issues of law and order and V.I.P. security, and in the
process, crime investigation has become a casualty. The process may further
deteriorate as security and law and order problems increase in coming years. Neither
the crime staff at subordinate levels nor the supervisory staff at district and higher
levels, in the melee, have the will or the resources to divert to crime investigation
while the crime rate in the country is assuming dangerous proportions.

Crime investigations should not be allowed to suffer because of disorder and

insecurity in .the country, as otherwise, a vicious circle may develop wherein
disorder and insecurity lead to fall in investigation and flabby investigation in turn,
to patulous disorder and insecurity. This triste development may be effectively
dealt-with by an independent crime setup, parallel to the law and order outfit.

The crime outfit should be responsible for the investigation of criminal cases
and function under an Inspector General of Police who is responsible to the police
 chief; with a crime Deputy Inspector General of Police in each range. Each district
may have a crime Superintendent of Police with the necessary number of detective
Deputy Superintendents of Police, detective Inspectors, Sub-Inspectors and
constabulary to assist while only Sub-Inspectors and above are empowered to
investigate cases. The Sub-Inspectors will be attached to various police stations with
powers to register criminal cases and investigate only petty cases. The crime
Superintendent of Police refers criminal cases of his district for investigation to
Police Inspectors or Deputy Superintendents of Police, woridng under him, on the
basis of the gravity of the cases and take up exceptionally grave cases for personal
investigation. The crime Deputy Inspectors General of Police may take up
exceptionally sensational cases in his range for personal investigation. The crime
outfit in a district must run parallel to the law and order outfit of the district.

An independent crime outfit in district and state may exquisitely behove to a

futuristic police setup by giving crime investigation a boost and insuring it against
the peracute pangs of organisational maladies of the future.

Control room-centered policing

The compulsions of urban policing are strikingly different from those of rural
policing. Response time is the hallmark of urban policing where a delay of a few
minutes can make a difference between death and life as criminals and terrorists
with the most sophisticated communication, weapon system and hair-raising
organisational accuracy overawe the police, pitted against them in the course of
their criminal operations. The present police station oriented policing is
incompetent to meet the challenges of the urban criminals either in resources or in
organisational ingine. Further, complacency in re own procinct may stifle the very
policing system of India.

Unity, resoursefulness and speed form the spine of urban policing. The control
room-centered policing in urban centres where men and transportation and latest
communication facilities that work round the clock in shifts enables galvanic
operations to tackle law and order problems. All town and cities require control
rooms of appropriate sizes with a control room chief of a befitting rank. A control
room of a metropolitan city having a population of more than fifty lakhs may be
entrusted to a control room chief of the rank of Deputy Inspector General of police;
a city having a population exceeding ten lakhs requires a chief of the rank of
Superintendent of police to its control room; a city of a population exceeding a
lakh may have a control room in charge of a Deputy Superintendent of Police; a
town having a population of more than 20,000 may require an Inspector to head its
control room; and a town with a population of less than twenty thousand may need
a control room under a Sub-Inspector. Each control room may have four
shift-officers of the rank immediately lower in rank; all subordinate staff of the
town or city are kept under the control room's disposal on round the clock shifts.
The control room should be well connected with several channels of telephones,
wireless sets, mobile telephones and other state-of-the-art communication
equipments to strategic points, mobile vans, task forces, hospitals, fire force units,
civil defence units, neighbouring police units and residences of senior police
officers and civil authorities. The control rooms should be equipped with the latest
gadgets and sufficient transportation facilities for the maintenance of law and order.
The law and order unit of the urban area may be headed by an officer of the rank
above the rank of the chief of the control room.

This outfit with unlimited resource at its disposal for launching any type of
operation within a few minutes of communication may suffice to meet the
challenges of maintaining law and order in urban areas in the new age.

Reorganisation of intelligence units

The place of collection and analysis of intelligence and special operations in

policing including security operations, maintenance of law and order and crime
investigation is sui generis as intelligence forms the building blocks of all nuances
of the police operations. The police, operating to collect intelligence, forms the
substructure of the edifice of policing of the country. Indian intelligence system is
yet to stand up to the enormous challenges thrown to it and it can nowhere be
compared with its counterparts in developed and even a few developing countries.
Various intelligence outfits of India are often found functioning at cross purposes.
India should reorganise and strengthen its intelligence outfit if it is to survive the
challenges of the coming age.

The Indian intelligence system should develop unity of purpose and operation
by working under the umbrella of an unified intelligence authority headed by the
union cabinet Secretary with intelligence chiefs of the police and military as
members. The authority should affect a synergy of intelligence operations through
its various wings of internal intelligence, foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence,
military intelligence and security intelligence. Sufficient attention should be given
to infuse entrain in the intelligence system of India and modernise its methods to
raise it to a few degrees closer to the international standards. The interferences of
officialdom should be eradicated from intelligence operations and a sense of
commitment and dedication should be infused by making intelligence operations a
lifelong career.

The state intelligence wing should be headed by an Inspector General of police,

directly responsible to the state police chief. The intelligence wing should be overall
in charge of intelligence operations, pertaining to security, law and order and crime
in the state.

Specially trained security Operators

The ultimate purpose of all police functions is public security. Either it is

intelligence collection or crime investigation or maintenance of law and order - all
roads lead to this single aspiration. Therefore, the security operations forms the crown of
policing activities without which all other police operations prove futile
exercises.

The India of the new age will need specially trained battalions of security
operators in every state to take charge of the security of vital installations and
VIPs. Each will work under the supervision of an Inspector General of police,
responsible to the state police chief. Also, each state police unit will have a small
commando force under the Inspector General of police to meet threats during
emergencies like hijacking, VVIP security under difficult circumstances,
complicated operations against terrorists etc. This special group will be brought
into operation only under exceptionally difficult circumstances on the direct orders
from the state police chief. Otherwise, it will be involved in continuous commando
training of the highest order. The commandos will be well-equipped with the
wherewithal of commando operations of the latest order. Only select officers will
be recruited to the group with extra emoluments to make the job really elite. The
commando units of the central government will train the state commando forces.

The need of commando groups in the state police will be increasingly felt in
future as the menace of terrorism and sabotage grows uninhibited with the future
possibility of peracute methods being accepted as legitimate ways of expressing
political dissent.

Improved management of human resources

The human aspect is the fulcrum of policing. Human comportment teethed with
authority to compesce the human mass forms the essence of police activities.
Policing essentially is human interaction, latitant in unending luctation to smite
criminal and anti-social elements. It is the human quality in the force that determines
its effectiveness and vitality. Therefore, human resource policy in a police
organisation needs careful and gritty handling at the highest possible level.

The present Indian environment of ruthless competitions impleached with a

degringolade of values made human resources management a farce in India. The
wherewithal of human resources management like recruitment, promotions,
transfers, rewards, punishments etc, is no more employed for the maximum benefit
of the organisation. Self-interests have undermined quality and character and
organisational interests are subordinated to personal behoofs. Though this
proclivity is prevalent in all fields in India, of late, its adverse effects are kenspeckle
in police organisation as the line-system of the organisation makes the ingenuity of
human resources management, a factor having direct bearing on the quality of the
policing. While policing is becoming a dynamic part of the governance in urban
areas, with the rise of urban pockets, the damage done by egregious management
of human resources in the police cannot be exaggerated. The declension may go
patulous with the passage of time if frack measures to arrest the depravation in human
resources management are ignored.

Diligent efforts at the highest level in the organisation to create a force

 characterised by integrity, commitment and intelligence may be the foremost need
of a police organisation of the coming age. The prevalency of police administration
over the general administration in the survival of a nation as a democratic and
orderly country may necessitate future changes in recruitment and service condition
rules to attract the very best talents of the country to the police organisation with
extraordinary care to ensure that anything less than the best with clean antecedents
does not step into the organisation.

Once the ingine is inveigled into the fold of the organisation, the ingenerate
need of retaining it in the organisation sans delusions and disappointments and
improving upon its attributes gains added momentum. In the extant system, only
those less than the best join the police organisation; less than satisfactory training
is imparted to them that fails to infuse even elementary professionalism; and the
practical experience in the field emaciates their noble ettles, if any are left alive, as
an improvident fool's paradise and causes them to fall in line with the mediocre.
Futuristic India may not have an alternative to breaking this vicious circle for its
survival and better managing its human resources by designing a training
programme that makes a budding officer a thorough professional in policing,
reinforces his noble ettles and changes the environment of the police organisation
to inspire a subjacent faith in the right value system.

Time-bound promotions

The system of assessment of a subordinate's work for promotion has fallen into
utter desuetude and dangerous misuse by the prevalent corrupt atmosphere. India,
in the interest of its future policing may do well to extricate the prospects of career
developments like promotions from subjective assessments of corrupt influences
by ensuring two periodical promotions in a time scale of twenty-five years. So,
every Police Constable retires minimum as an Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police, a
Sub-Inspector as a Deputy Superintendent of Police and an Indian Police Service
Officer as an Inspector General of Police. The present incidence of most of the
Police Constables retiring as Police Constables may not go well with the concept
of ex aequo society of futuristic India and pose a threat to the health of the police
organisation in the environment of increased awakening of the 21st century. The
officers of the Indian Police Service may be posted on first appointment as
Superintendents of Police to make the service more attractive, though not to districts
directly and the dual recruitments at the rank as in vogue now require to be stopped
to make police recruitment meaningful.

Officers in exceptional cases may have avenues for special promotions in

addition to the two, provided in a time scale of twenty-five years, on the basis of a
written examination and on an overall assessment of their career of twenty-five
years by high-powered committees formed for the purpose. The promotion of
constabulary in exceptional cases to the ranks of PSIs and above should be screened
by the Police Board of the State; the promotion of PSIs as Superintendents of Police
and above should be screened by the All India Police Authority and the promotion
of IPS Officers as Director General of Police and above by a Central Cabinet
Committee headed by the Prime Minister. This arrangement will ensure fearless
and professional policing sans complaissance to corrupt elements, particularly
when the prospects of corrupt practices of repriming professionals of probity and
hoisting flaccid complaisants to prominence are certain to be in excelsis in the new
age.

Removal of constabulary

The constabulary which forms the backbone and the cutting-edge of Indian
policing and wields real authority over the populace, is a lowly-paid, modestly
educated, non-elite mass of uniformed workers. The authority they wield makes
them fearsome while their low status in society sperres them from commanding
empathy, respect and legitimacy. The fearsome authority sans empathy, respect and
legitimacy decidedly proves a deadly substructure for an organisation and people
certainly resent an organisation with this unhealthy attribute. Nor the truculent
authority, invested in officials of an intra-mural enlightenment and responsibility
can ensure its comme il faut exercise. This foible in the extant setup manifests as
increased hazards to glib policing as the complexity of its challenges thickens in
coming years, if no remedial measures are undertaken belive.

The Indian police of the 21st century will require Sub-Inspectors with their
present scale of education and status in society as the primary unit of policing at
the cutting-edge level with no policing powers and responsibilities devolved
beneath this level. The constabulary upto the level of the Assistant Sub-Inspectors
of Police should be limited to the duties of menial assistants without police powers
and responsibilities. This will require a huge army of Sub-Inspectors in the Indian
police while the constabulary stands to be severely spruced in strength.

With the removal of the constabulary from the police hierarchy, the
Sub-Inspectors will besort to the lowest rank in the police setup. Each police station
works under a Police Inspector assisted by a host of Sub-Inspectors, performing all
subordinate functions of the policing including beat patrolling and investigation of
minor cases under this dispensation.

Professional training facilities

The chief cause of policing never being a profession in India is the

ineffectiveness of its training facilities. In spite of adequate infrastructures available
for training police officials of various ranks, these centres largely fail to meet the
quality required to make a recruit a thorough professional. An overhaul of the
extant training facilities in terms of its quality, content and character is inevitable
to keep the Indian police excubant to future challenges. The training facilities
should be made centres of scholarship and research on police subjects with
professionals of national reputation in each subject handling their respective
subjects. The psychology faculty of the centre should endeavour to build character
and infuse right orientation among the recruits. The faculty members of the training
centres should be exceptionally well paid so as to inveigle the best in the field to
join. Army officers must handle outdoor classes. This model helps in instilling the
highest standards and expectations in trainees till they become full-fledged officers
and orient them to become professional police officers, apart from distancing them
from the moderate influences which are herded to handle police training centres in
the present setup. The trainees must be exposed to police officers as guest speakers,
by inviting very senior police officers of the highest integrity and job standards to
deliver talks on specific topics. Separate professional training courses should be
available in the training centres for law and order police, crime police, intelligence
police and security police with scope for advanced learning with an eye to the latest
developments in each respective field. Latest training methods should be adopted
with management, computers and advanced psychology inter alia as the common
subjects of study for all the courses. The training centres should give the impression
of being temples of advanced studies apart from being so.

Professionalism in policing

Policing requires commitment and dedication on the part of its operators. The
principles of faith and responsibility must run invisus through the vitals of the
policing, should it be purposeful and successful. The extant bureaucratic malady
that infested the Indian police setup cohibits healthy policing practices. The police
organisation should be reoriented to develop a professional approach to its
operations with full faith and responsibility as the hallmark of the delegation of
power. The present emphasis on procedures should be shifted to commitment and
result-orientation within the ambit of the rules.

An analytical study of policing, its trends and modem techniques helps to bring
professionalism in policing. Due encouragement for the study of theoretical aspects
of policing and its application in the field through in-service training 'will be a
welcome step in this direction. If police managers succeed in inspiring in police
officers an interest in theoretical aspects of the policing and its latest techniques, it
would be a kenspeckle leap in abraiding Indian police to the challenges in the future.

Gentlemanly image

Though efforts have been en train to ameliorate the image of the Indian police
for a long time, nothing substantial could be achieved for amateurish handling of
the affair. The present Indian police managers have their image development tools
limited to issuing occasional press statements when image development has become
a highly advanced field of specialisation with unending scope for further
advancements. In view of the considerable significance of the image for successful
police operations, the wherewithal of image-building in police organisation is
required to be updated with latest techniques with the help of professionals in the
field.
Change of uniform

A change in the existing police uniform is an issue to be deeply probed into to

improve the police image. The present khaki uniform of police inspires resentment
as it is psychologically associated with repression and violence. A change of police
uniform to full white or pleasant colours may prove to be a measure for the better
in removing the negative image of the police. The overall strategy in selecting a
new police uniform should be to infuse a sense of oneness and quality among the
ranks of police and inspiring a psychological disposition of friendliness,
confidence, respect and healthy fear in the public with a compulsion to see the police
as their own people, but invested with the responsibility of a noble task.

Good living standards

The police organisation functions effectively only when a reasonably good

living standard is made affordable to all ranks of officers, so that they can deal with
antisocial elements from a level of strength and confidence sans the lure of easy
booty, thrown en revanche to a let-off. A low living standard retards the police
image and esteem in society that are the essentials of successful policing. It is more
so in future while more and more of the so-called elite jump into the fray of criminal
activities in an increasingly complicated society.

It may be necessary to make police officers financially bien in comparison to

their counterparts in other services with 30% of their pay paid as risk allowance
and 20% as hazard allowance to compensate job factors. This helps to attract the
best to the fold of the police organisation, apart from protecting them from financial
distractions. A feeling of condign compensation is certain to boost the commitment
and efficiency of the police.

Modern facilities and management tools

The police organisation has seen mushroom growth sans application of requisite
management principles. The major lapse lies in failure to define organisational
objectives and formulate specific set of actions thereon. For example, extraneous
objectives like creating employment opportunities often inspire creation of
additional posts irrespective of the organisational needs, which results in corrosion
of job contents and thereby morale of the force. Work often is not allocated on the
basis of scientific assessment of the character and aptitude. The latest equipments
purchased a grands frais under modernisation schemes without creating the
infrastructure for its operation or analysing its relative merits to the organisation,
resulted in its being dumped a few days of its operation while even basic necessities
of policing are yet to be met in a fsw other quarters. These anomalies prove criant
luxuries to a police organisation, sure to be faced with enormous challenges in the
third millennium.

The police organisation of India do well to be featous, well-organised and

 formulate actions and operations in line with latest management principles and
practices. K may either constitute an efficient cell of management experts to advice
or hire a management consultation firm for guidance. At any rate, the police
organisation of the third millennium should be a far smaller unit than now, manned
by highly committed and capable officers who are paid and looked after well by
the government.

The present policing system in India has too much of paper work with hundreds
of registers maintained in each station or office with tens of forms filled up in each
stage of policing. A detailed analytical study of paper works in policing may help
to considerably reduce paper works and thereby save precious official man-hours
for use in actual police operations. Computerisation of an paper works is also a
possibility not far away.

The modernisation of the police force with the latest communication, transport,
weaponry and office equipment system and me simultaneous creation of the
necessary infrastructure for their operation in advance alone besort the police force
to the challenges of elite criminals, armed with latest equipments. India of the third
millennium will require its police force to be equipped with helicopters as an aide
in policing in emergencies. A genuine and effective effort to achieve modernisation
ends would be sine qua non for the future policing. A face-lift to police stations and
offices with the latest office equipment and general facilities will go a long way in
creating a psychological atmosphere for effective policing.

Creation of criminal law board

India requires the constitution of a statutory Criminal Law Board as an advisory body to
liaise between the police setup and the union law ministry regarding crininal
laws to facilitate glib policing. The board, as a permanent body, may have
seniormost officers of the central government from home and law ministries, police
and prosecution departments, distinguished humanists and senior advocates of the
Superme Court as members with the union home minister as its chairman. It must
undertake the study of the need of changes in criminal laws from rime to rime. The
board may meet every quarter and discuss extant criminal laws and their
shortcomings in the light of representations received from officers in the field from
the police and prosecution departments and make proposals for requisite changes
in criminal laws e re nata.

Widened responsibilities in crime administration

A few glaring anomalies and some erroneous provisions in the extant criminal
laws of India contributed to the easy escapade of criminals from the clutches of law
in many cases and harassment of innocent persons by the police in some other cases.
The loopholes in the criminal laws have to be plugged imprimis if crime
administration has to be effective in India and command a semblance of respect
and confidence of the public.
 The police or judicial officer under whose custody a person is kept under
detention should be made responsible by name for the latter's timely release with
a provision that if detention exceeds the period provided by law, it will make the
concerned officer liable for proceedings for unlawful detention without the
privilege of exemptions for actions performed in official colour, available under
extant laws. Also, all cases of violence and physical outrages committed in police
custody should be made punishable with exemplary penalties by special
legislations. Such outre measures may bring an end to shocking criminal acts
committed eo nomine policing in some quarters and save the Indian police from the
embarrassment of severe public resentment.

Current bail provisions of the Indian criminal law constitute a source of acute
embarrassment to police officers with criminals, arrested after weeks or months of
stupendous efforts, let off by the judiciary on bail. only to facilitate jumping the
bail. All discretions about bail with police and judiciary should be taken away with
only a select few offences of enormous gravity being made nonbailable wherein
neither police nor judiciary can release criminals on bail. This eliminates the
possibility of favours to some criminals and bring mechanical accuracy and
objectivity to bail provisions. This measure may prove to be a trailblazer in
ensconcing criminal laws from misuse during the difficult period ahead.

Police commissioners in cities

Every city in India with a population of more than a lakh must have an
independent policing unit under a Police Commissioner of a rank befitting the
population of the city; a city with a population upto ten lakhs may have one of the
rank of Superintendent of police; a city with a population upto 50 lakhs may have
a Deputy Inspector General of Police as the chief and a city with a population of
50 lakhs or more may have an Inspector General of Police as its Police
Commissioner. The setup of Police Commissionerate gives a sense of unity and
purposefulness to the task of policing, apart from being most suitable form of setup
for urban policing with magisterial powers being invested with the police to enable
prompt action. This setup with empight responsibilities instils commitment and
dedication in policing.

Creation of all India police authority

All maladies of the present policing emanate from the politicians who are only
concerned with winning the next election. Until the police organisation is extricated
from the vile prise of the mediocre politicians, it cannot hope to rise above the
mediocre level of its el patron either in proficiency or in character, as such
mediocrity is wont to permeate downwards in a democratic setup. In the
circumstances, the police organisation with its sensitive responsibilities towards the
maintenance of order and security of the country, cannot afford to submit to political
vagaries.
 Though a proposal to extricate a precious machinery like the police from the
clutches of the politicians is likely to be met with enormous resistance, it is an
important measure to be undertaken at all costs in the overall interests of the country.
The task may be achieved by creation of an All India Police Authority,
responsible only to the President of India at the national level with regional Police
Boards in states as independent bodies, managing police organisations at the centre
and states. The All India Police Authority must be headed by a Supreme Court
Judge with union home secretary and central cabinet secretary as members and the
seniormos^ police officer of the country as the member-secretary. The regional
Police Bodrd must have a High Court Judge at the helm with home secretary and
state chief secretary as members and the state police chief as its member-secretary.
The arrangement is likely to bring an end to undue interference in police affairs,
thus enabling the police to function in an independent atmosphere. The Indian
police may hope to turn out eximious work in the new age if these measures are
implemented.

Policing as a phenomenon of maintaining order and security in society cannot

afford to be oblivious of the flux in the modem lifestyles. As an integral part of civil
living, policing must prepare itself to amate the increasing complexities of modem
life by modifying its organisational and administrative setups to the demands, these
vicissitudes create. The changes warranted in policing may either be deciduous or
peremptory depending on the nature of the transition in society. It is left to police
planners to analyse the nature of the flux in the society and locate the areas where
decession from the past practices has become sine qua non for policing. This should
be an ongoing process if policing is to retain its relevance as the guardian of social
discipline. The futuristic challenges of policing would be pro rata to the twists of
the future living. The prospects of Indian population reaching the mark of a billion
and the concomitant luctation of two billion needy hands to grab a share in the
country's limited resources of food, shelter, water, clothing, electricity, schooling,
employment etc. naturally make life a cut-throat concours and a ruthless adventure
devoid of scruple, human values and a concern for fellow men. It would be a fight
for survival with less competent and skeigh gentlemen going belive hors de combat.
The kenspeckle pejoration had already set in from the early sixties. Though the
Indian policing system managed somehow to deal with the vicissitudes (ill now,
the geometric acceleration of the flux of the coming years may prove to be too much
to the extant police setup. Therefore, it is high time now that we prepare our police
organisation and administration for the future challenges.

FIVE
INTERNAL SECURITY - CHALLENGES AND
APPROACH

In an age of sabotage and terrorism, no man, no place and no structure is

really safe; no time of the day or night can be construed as safe. With the
increasing complexity of human society, with increasing claims on limited
resources of the world, the kettle of human life is spilling over with organised
hatred and violence. Terrorism has become an international phenomenon.
Accrescent unemployment makes terrorism popular by giving unemployed
youths a raison d'etre for life and an ideology to pursue. The lopsided material
growth of the 20th century life at the cost of contentment and inner peace,
endeared to man the thrills and adventures of the life that fill up his inner void.
New scientific inventions give man such sophisticated mechanisms and
machinery that he can do anything he wants without being personally.present at
a place. Each man has potentially become a power centre and he can build or
destroy the world he lives in. Each man has become a force to reckon with in
the survival of this Earth. The rise in hatred and violence in the present world,
compounded with the man's dangerous power to wreak vengeance avec
acharnement made internal security an unsure field. It replaced the avital police
function of crime control and maintenance of law and order to become the
primary gauntlet of the police.

Police on an unequal job

The threat to internal security is posed by highly trained, highly motivated

volunteers belonging to highly organised and highly resourceful terrorist outfits.
The unenviable task of providing protection to men, places and structures from
these committed zealots on the antipode with the precious choice of time, place
and target in their favour and any number of sophisticated methods and
techniques of strike to choose from, continually sap the manpower, machinery
and other resources of the police. The police, with its forfaim organisation and
approach to challenge, is found to be too nonpareil to the dimensions of the
problem even in advanced countries. The pressure sine dubio helped the police
to walk a la hauteur de its adversaries with regard to plans of modernisation,
though far en arrier. What should have been is the other way round, that is, the
police keeping me lead in modernisation techniques and the antipode marching
to keep pace with the police. Unfortunately, it is not to be in the Indian
situation.

Lack of ground work

In absence of strength, resources, plans and the confidence to meet the

gauntlets of terrorism, the reaction of the police to terrorist threats is desperate
mobbing and covering the target at best and diffident immobilisation at the
 worst. The inability of the police to penetrate highly raisonne terrorist
organisations and get an insight into their goal, plan and method of work put it
at a costly disadvantage. The failure of the police to draw up detailed long-term
plans to meet terrorist challenges handicaps it in its operations. It is just non
pnssumus to guarantee internal security sans a sound knowledge of the terrorists
and their proclivities and a systematic ruse de guerre to checkmate them in
carefully drawn-out phases. Terrorists are not the stuffs and internal security is
not the telos to be dealt with in bits and farthings as and when challenges arc
posed.

Spasmodic approach to security challenges

An internal security machinery working in a void often gives rise to

ludicrous security reactions. Anonymous calls or letters in most unlikely
situations arc attended to with a desperate mobilisation of men and machinery
a grands frais to the stale exchequer sans any research into the call or the letter
and everything ends up as a hoax. Any number of such instances are available
in recent Indian police history. An anonymous Kannada letter claimed to have
been wrilicn by LTTE cadres was received in Mysore with a threat of blowing
up the KRS dam on the intervening night of 14 and 15 of August, 1991 and was
later followed with similar threats of blowing up Vidhana Soudha on me same
night. The comminations were followed with exoteric security paraffle at all those places
to the fun of the plebeian. A right kenner to the LTTE objectives,
expertise and method of operation would have brevi manu dismissed the calls
and the letters as a non-event. The Karnataka police had to prepare itself en
plein jour for an emergency because it was not prepared and equipped to handle
internal security problems with courage and confidence. It is not wrong to gear
up the police machinery to the level of procinct to meet challenges even in cases
of suspected threats. But, such security could have been given more subtly
without fanfare, flare of reclame and undue show of strength, to save the police
from being a laughing stock. The desperate police reaction in such patently
unlikely situations may prompt mischievous elements to shoot similar missives
almost daily. Can the police react to all those letters similarly? The desperate
reaction of the police only betrayed a lack of courage and confidence 'n meeting
the needs of internal security. No show of strength can ever provide real
security. It is subtle planning and conticent operation that make security
possible. All security arrangements must be preceded by thorough research and
detailed operational plans. This is completely forgotten in the Indian situation.

Need of silent and planned approach

In an expertly drawn-up operational plan of sabotage, minimum possible

number of people are involved, usually one or two apart from the logistic
support. It is quality that counts and not quantity in sabotage and security
operations. The minimum number of people who really execute the sabotage arc
highly motivated and highly trained, competent individuals, capable of keel
 operation. No sabotage operation depends upon the strength of manpower nor
can it hope to succeed by the number of people, involuted. Rather, the larger the
number, the smaller the chances of success because of human nature,
coordination problems and higher chances of leakage of subtle operational
details. It also involves the problem of providing security and escape routes for
more men in the post-operational period. Ergo, it is futile to depend on the
strength of manpower and machinery at the cost of quality in security plans. No
numbers can stop a highly motivated and trained man from sneaking upto his
target and blowing it up with modern gadgetry which are next to impossible to
detect. What is required is not companies of policemen, but a handful of highly
qualified and motivated men of experience with an intelligent, thoroughly
drawn-up security plan, based on competent intelligence inputs about the objects
and operational plans of the adversary. Everything except these salient features
of an internal security plan is present in the responses of the Indian police to
security challenges.

Overhauling of police system

The police force in India was raised imprimis to tackle crime and
law-and-order problems. Its recruitment, training and on-the-field experience
programmes stress upon the elements required to tackle those problems. The
Indian police organisation, in its stiff hierarchical order and discipline, is geared
to meet these challenges. There is little scope in the present police for the
growth of an aptitude other than for these deja vu functions. No effort was
made to overhaul the police even after security challenges have superated in
their primacy in police functions. It should be borne in mind that the demands
on the police to meet security challenges are tout a fait distinct from the
demands to which the Indian police has long been accustomed. The aptitude
required to protect targets from determined esoteric strikes by terrorists is
antipodeal with the aptitude required for the show of strength, necessary to
suppress a loosely knit mob of wankle law-breakers. In spite of these ascensive
strains on the Indian police, its organisation and resources, due to the dangerous
spurt in security threats, it unfortunately has failed to abraid and overhaul its
system to amate the new challenges; the consectaneous fatalities of men and
other targets are steeply rising every year with a free hand to terrorist
reticulation to strike at will. The glitches of the Indian police in re internal
security are obvious by the fact that Indian soil has become a fertile ground to
breed and feed terrorist organisations. Every corner of India, has its own
terrorist outfit and each of these outfits has proved itself a pernicious challenge
to the Indian police. Never, even by chance, has the Indian police shown that it
can control a terrorist outfit. The fact is that even all armies of the world
together cannot bring a terrorist outfit to heel, unless the soft belly of the
terrorist outfit is subtly hit embusque by intelligent operations. Sadly, the Indian
police is yet to realise this fact.

Sabotage, terrorism and security risks are not phenomena pro tempore. They
 are here to stay and the police must know to meet the situations they engender.
And threats to internal security, by all means, will assume demonic proportions
as time advances. The survival of the police in coming years depends upon its
ability lo meet the needs of internal security. It has no alternative but to overhaul
its passe system, organisation, operational methods, approach to work, training
and manpower resources to be able to do so. The faster it is done, the better.
For, the inability of the police in successfully handling security challenges is
resulting in fatalities almost every day.

Selection of right people

The first parameter for preparing the police for the future challenges of the
internal security is selecting right people with right aptitude, right abilities and
right background. This requires thorough job analysis in re the requirements to
handle the pertinent responsibilities. Choosing the right man from the motley to
inclip him to the ergon forms the foremost need of preparing the police for the
impending challenges. It should be realised that the need of such people to the
police overweighs the need of the police for these extraordinary species. As
internal security is a condition of national survival, no law, no fundamental
right, no directive principle nor any social welfare ideologies should interfere
with the recruitment of the right people. Internal security being a highly
sensitive and secretive job, each less than right man inside is a positive risk to
security operations. Further, such people are a drain on the efficiency and
effectiveness of the organisation. Ergo, avoiding people less than right for the
job is as important in recruitment as selecting the right person.

Selection on special footing

The people who fit-in to internal security responsibilities must have an

innate trait to give themselves to the job that they take up. They must be
sensitive people with a high commitment to their responsibilities with the
mental and physical agility to fulfil the task ex mero motu. Men of high
intelligence quotient, patience, aplomb and perseverance have to be immanent
in their nature. A profound sense of patriotism is an added qualification.
However, not many people having these rare qualities are readily available. It
must be a sacred duty of the security operators to ingest such rara avis to the
organisation wherever they are found and with whatever sacrifice. It is possible
only if recruitment to these places are made a postern affair at the highest level
without throwing recruitment open to competitions where all types of people
sneak in in malam partem for various reasons. Internal security, more often than
not, is an invious profession wherein life is committed to its objectives.

In the circumstances, the indraught to the fold must be agraste with respect
and behoofs in form of liberal purses and perks apart from more than generous
promotional and death-cum-retirements benefits that behove to the compulsive
commitment sine qua non for the job. This helps to widen the latitude of choice
 by promising a belle vue which is pareil to its demands to the aspirants to this
difficile career.

Training

Having suitable manpower is one thing. Preparing them for the future
challenges is quite another. It is here that training comes into picture. Training
high-calibre, sensitive people is a much more responsible and arduous job. If the training
is to prepare them for a sensitive job like internal security, the gravity of
the task gets -further compounded by the addition of another dimension to the
responsibility. The emphasis here is to raise the innate traits of the trainees to
desired levels. They should be moulded to be highly motivated, knowledgeable,
bright professionals with a flair for results. They must be taught to operate
without plangent attention and get maximum mileage from minimum basic
action. Such a training needs a carefully drawn-up training programme with
creative inputs. In sensitive jobs like internal security, grooming manpower
including recruitment and training is more vital than the job itself.

Security operations

All internal security operations must be part of a raisonne security plan that
is drawn out in advance after thorough research and study of the best available
intelligence on internal and external affairs, the geographical position of the
country, the internal and external economic situation, likely shifts in foreign
relations, objects and intentions of neighbouring countries, the dynamics of
ethnic, communal and linguistic interaction within the country and scientific
advances in weaponry and other gadgetry, having a bearing on the security
mailers. The security plan must foresee likely sources of trouble inside and
outside the country and cultivate undercover'operatois at sensitive spots either
by its own resources or through agents, often years or decades in advance to
keep an eye on developments, feed intelligence and control situations by
infiltration to strategic positions. Without this groundwork, no security
operation can make much headway. Such a long-drawn security plan that
foresees events decades ahead in the semiptemal interests of the state security
presumes foresightedness and a thorough study and research of facts by its
author to back up the plan. There is no sema of any such a plan obvious for
Indian internal security and what is happening around gives the triste impression
that the gauntlets of internal security are met day to day in line with meeting
daily law-and-order problems. The best India can gasconade now arc the
internal security schemes in police offices with names of sensitive targets and
general instructions about where and how they must be protected in emergencies
and normal days. These schemes are tout a fait wasted exercises in these days of
highly sophisticated terrorist strikes by organised terrorist outfits. More
important, the passe instructions in these supposedly secret official documents
are no more secret. Though some attempts are made to update these instructions
when a security lapse leads to a public outcry, none of such general instructions
 can assure even a semblance of security in this age of sophistication. A
resourceful terrorist gladiator who is committed to execute his strike a tout prix
can hit his target at will malgre tout security precautions undertaken in
compliance to updated security instructions in Indian internal security schemes. It is
obvious that the security lapses during Shri Rajiv Gandhi's Sriperumbudur
election campaign made the job of the LITE squad easy. At the same time, it
should be borne in mind that no measures by security outfits of India in its
present infaust state of affair would have prevented the committed and avizefull
cadres of the LTTE from accomplishing their devilish task. The killing would
have been merely a matter of time. There are infinite number of courses
available to a resourceful and inventive mind. It is in these circumstances that
India should invenit its new security outfit.

Knowledge of the security risks

Any security buildup must stand on two basic requirements; firstly, up-to-
date knowledge of the security risks and their strategies and secondly, a security
machinery devised to meet specific demands of the specific circumstances. A
thorough knowledge of the adversaries includes an in-depth knowledge of their
long and short term objectives, their time-to-time aberrations, strategies,
expertise, modes of operation, friends, enemies, sources of support, likely
change of strategies and their analyses to assess the possibility of security
threats and likely targets. Yes, it is a stupendous task involving huge manpower
and other resources a grands frais. Yet, it is worth the cost and trouble in the
interests of the national security and a far more intelligent and meaningful use of
human and material resources than spending them to indagate criminals after
they accomplish their pernicious job. Investigation of terrorism-oriented crimes
serves practically no purpose and makes no impact on the plan and strategies of
a well-planned terrorist outfit.

Specific security plans

A security build-up is infrangible only if it is specific fur each circumstance,

depending upon the needs as assessed by security experts from time to time.
Security must essentially be an esoteric operation with open eyes and ears and
closed mouth; with open mind and closed heart. It must be a shadowy operation
rather than a gust of light blinding people around. Intelligent terrorist operators
prefer to strike in this gust of light which is what security tends to be. A good
and pollent security plan should not have an open set-plan which by all
likelihood would be used by intelligent terrorists to their advantage. The
pollicitation of a good security plan depends upon its secretiveness, perspicacity
and ability to take even a well-prepared and resourceful terrorist operator by
surprise.

Ring round duty

 Indian security plans lay stress on covering targets with armed men and
preventing people from approaching the threatened target. In absence of
adequate penetration to the source of threat, none of these pernoctation can have
any impact on the capabilities of a terrorist to strike his target. A human wall
around the target is an infructuous show of strength in an age where there are
powerful weapons and' ammunitions that can penetrate several such layers in a
single stroke. Even the best of the snipers protecting a target would be at a
disadvantage in felling a terrorist-to-strike who has all the advantages of time,
place, surprise and the mental and physical reflexes to superate both his target
and armed protectors. A well-planned terrorist attack fully prepares for all these
odd contretemps. Those around the target, posted to spot suspicious movements
among people are also at the same disadvantage. It is the skeely terrorist who is
keenly watching his target and men around versus the spotters staring blankly at
inconnu for suspicious movements. An intelligently chosen and thoroughly
trained terrorist operator can easily overcome this problem.

Screening of people

Another important strategy of the Indian security machinery is screening

people before permitting proximity to the threatened target. A resourceful
terrorist plan can facilely circumvent this with money, connections and
influence. There are infinite ingenious ways available to a resourceful and
imaginative man, determined to reach his target. In circumstances where a
police force remiss and ineffectual at best and corrupt at the worst is in charge
of screening as spotters, his job is facile and custom-made for his aptitude.

Quiet security

Indian security plans ignore the cardinal principle of a good security

reticulation namely, providing security without coming in the way of the normal
process of life of the target except where unavoidable. The minimum show of
force must form an inviolable part of the scheme. The leitmotif of an effective
security buildup is providing perfect security with minimum inconvenience to
the concerned. But, Indian security sleuths believe otherwise. They believe in
taking over the target a toute force to their control, modifying the normal course
and process of the target to their convenience with the least regard to whether
the target is a place, an installation, or a dignitary, as if they try to provide
security in exchange for the freedom of movement and action. And all this for
obviously ineffective security! This is ludicrous. Indian security reached this facetious
ebb because it is diffident of even thinking of providing security to
targets an naturel. The fact is that it cannot provide true security in its present
mauvais ton in spite of dictating terms to the target. En principe, security is a
birthright and it should be available in that form with no constraints attached on
free movement. It is not to be so in the existing circumstances of Indian security
buildup and even national leaders in India accepted the fact by trading their
image and popularity for this supposed safety.
Relevance of present security arrangements

It is argued that the extant Indian security system is effective in discouraging

less resourceful terrorist outfits from attempting strikes and preventing half-
hearted attacks. The argument is not convincing for the reason that there can be
no lesser terrorist strikes in the present world. All terrorist outfits worth the
name in the present international situation are extremely resourceful with
serious objectives, plans and strategies and a complete commitment to carry out
their operational plans. Budding terrorist groups do not come into picture and
plans to provide security from them cannot be called security schemes. With
India's present security capabilities, no target is really out of reach from the
commination of a determined terrorist outfit. If a target of a terrorist outfit's hit-
list is not struck for a long time, the reasons for the same can be only three,

a) that the terrorist organisation has not really intended to strike the target,

b) that the outfit is yet to grow resourceful enough, or

c) that security sleuths

could gear up their machinery, taking this specific case as an exception to foil
the plans of the outfit concerned. India should reach a stage where the third
reason which is an exception becomes a rule in providing foolproof security to
all targets, all the time, sans throwing the normal course of life of the
threatened target to the winds.

Needs of a perficient security buildup

The Indian police system lays emphasis on dashing qualities rather than on
mental qualities and planning that form the elan vital of security policing. The
age-old police traits like a criant show of force and a strict adherence to
hierarchical order have a mesalliance with the needs of security operations
where patience, perseverance, calculating mind, an ingine to foresee
developments, speedy physical and mental reflexes, unbreachable sangfroid in
adverse situations, high commitment to the work in hand, initiative and above
all, courage to take responsibility for action decide the success or otherwise of
the security buildup. Indeed, these human qualities have to be reinforced with
neoteric security equipment including latest communication, transport,
information, weaponry and other security-oriented systems. The organisation
must have three full-fledged wings in charge of a) collection of intelligence,
b) process and assessment of security risks and c) field operation.

a) Collection of Intelligence

Collection of vital intelligence forms the pith of perficient security

 operation. An effective security buildup perforce stands on the foundation of
strategic intelligence. The feracity of security basically depends on the quality
of intelligence as an input. A security organisation of neoteric age cannot
survive without an effective intelligence wing as a backup unit. And key
intelligence does not come freely. It has to be extracted at great risks from
closely guarded sources by resourceful intelligence operators. Often, such an
operation may require years of patient preparation by an undercover to cultivate
dependable insiders to the cause. These operations are potential comminations
to the mutual relation and ergo intelligence operators are left to their own fate
by employers when the operators are caught. Intelligence is a venal commodity
and iis price can be fixed in monetary terms. Collection of intelligence involves
huge expenditure to maintain organisation and communication reticulation,
support the logistics of the operations and at times to affect outright purchases
as well. It requires a huge army of highly-paid and expensive operators and
agents to cover places and groups that arc potentially security risks. The success
of security back home lout a fait depends upon the quality of the intelligence
sent back. In an age of bitter concours to win over or withhold a piece of
intelligence, double crosses or even triple crosses are au naturel. The situation
necessitates keeping an eye on these operators from a distance. In other words,
the intelligence collection setup is a very complicated machinery which always
must be maintained in top condition a grands frais as an important factor in an
internal security buildup.

b) Process and Assessment of Security Risks

The raw inputs from intelligence sources have to be winnowed, classified

and processed if found to have security relevance. Intelligence collection sans
processing is as good as, if not worse than, not collecting them at all. Raw
intelligence throws the national security to the winds by raising a maelstrom
wherein facts and fancies are complected beyond recognition. It blunts the
sensitivities of the sleuths and excoriates targets to real danger. The possibility
can be avoided by creating a nerve-centre, a command post in the security
organisation to process and assess intelligence inputs anent ground realities, past
history and known facts. This organisation must be manned by people au fait
and capable of reading between lines to arrive at right conclusions as well as invenit
strategies in the interests of the internal security. This body must have a
flair for research and analysis and knowledge of the internal situation of the
country, dynamics of various factors that have bearing on the internal security
and possess an insight into minor developments that may blow up into serious
security risks at some future date. It must be constituted of carefully chosen
professionals with proven records of eximious work and a deep sense of
patriotism and commitment to their work and should be directly responsible to
the chief of the organisation and work as a high-power advisory body in all
matters pertaining to the security. The unit must function as a command-post
where intelligence inputs are instreamed and wherefrorn field operations
emanate.
 c)Field Operation

Field operation is the cutting-edge of the security buildup. Other activities in

the organisation are just postern backups to the field operation that forms the
mainstay of the security organisation and inclips a vast portion of the
organisation's manpower, equipments, machinery, money, time and other
resources. If intelligence operators must have alert eyes and cars, security
analysts must have smart mental faculties and field-operators must have smart
reflexes inter alia. Only people with exceptional courage and perseverance and
daredevilry can behove to this job. Resourceful people with a plurisie of energy
and willingness to work hard in tramontane circumstances, rare single-
mindedness of purpose and devotion can alone be successful in the dangerous
world of field operations. They have to be pollent-willed people with the
procinct to risk their lives for the sake of achieving goals. Screening people for
these traits is not a facile job. This arduous job has to be performed with great
care and caution, for, the quality of internal security of the land depends upon
the work turned out by them. The people who are chosen for the job must be
able to provide security to men, places and structures, known to be sensitive and
comminated by enemies, while themselves remain in shades. Speed and
surprise are their chief attributes. Resourcefulness to do jobs which appear
impossible is their mainstay. Indeed, the demands arc too high and this
necessitates careful selection and recruitment, efficient training, high motivation
and liberal compensations in the form of generous pay, perks and expenditure
accounts. The people who play with their lives to meet the objectives of the
internal security have to be treated well for the risks to which they willingly
submit themselves in the interests of the country and its internal security.

Glitches of Indian security setup

A coup d'oel over the security surroundings of India gives an insipid taste,
be it about security intelligence, security planning or security operation. The
bungling of the Indian police at Konanakunte recently where they failed to
capture Sivarasan and Subha of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case is a recent
paradigm. The chance intelligence as early as on 18-8-91 that both the
extremists were holed up with others in a ramshackle house at Konanakunte
could not help Indian security forces to catch them alive with all time, resources
and the element of surprise at their disposal while the handful of desperados
inside the walled structure had no knowledge of what was happening around
them. This primarily reflects grim glitches in the field of security planning in
India. A little use of the faculty of thinking and planning and ingine to retain an
even keel under pressure would not have made capturing the extremists alive a
difficile goal to achieve. Instead of showing conticent patience to invenit an
undercover strategy that allowed the unsuspecting extremists to come on the
street on their own and thus enter the waiting dragnet of security sleuths or
entering their den as friends with the help of undercover agents, our cops used
the first available opportunity to spoil the advantage of surprise that fell into
their hands by openly surrounding the building and thought of storming it while
even the average newspaper reader knew a coup sur that the first reaction of the
extremists when they were cornered would be the felo de se. What transpired
ultimately there by the acte gratuit was not only the suicide by the extremists, it
was the fetish suicide of the operation to catch the extremists alive. India and the
Rajiv Gandhi assassination investigation gained nothing by the the extremists'
death. They would have been more useful to India and the investigation had
they remained alive in India or anywhere in the world. All hopes were doused
per saltum by the senseless seizure of the hideout, ironically, using a vital piece
of intelligence that would have made the Rajiv Gandhi assassination
investigation a true success story of the 20th century. The glitch itself is a
tragedy.

Micro-and macro-security planning

The primary reason for such bungling is that Indian sleuths have not yet
realised the intricacies of security operation. Their perception of security
operation does not go much beyond multiple crack-forces, created one after the
other like the Black Cats, National Security Guards, Special Protection Group
etc. Perhaps some more are to follow at the cost of the state exchequer. Indeed,
these crack forces are important. They are the ammunitions of the security
weaponry. However effective the ammunitions be, they are worthless without a
working gun to fire them. It is the situation of the present Indian security
atmosphere. India is yet to develop an effective infrastructure to plan security
strategies at micro and macro levels. In the absence of such a machinery, the
Indian security system is bound to react with struts and frets; mere random reactions
depending on the fancies of the person in charge of the situation.
Never should the internal security of a country be left in the hands of a few
individuals; the vital interests of the country cannot be based on casual decisions
of a few security sleuths. An exhaustive internal security plan on which all
security strategies and operations are based must be the gospel of the internal
security religion. Sadly, India is yet to have such a macro-plan to guide its
security sleuths; it is yet to realise the inevitability of the macro-plan in reacting
to security threats.

Model internal security schemes

The present perception of internal security in India revolves round a few

catchwords like prohibited areas, protected areas, official secrets, sensitive
installations, static guards, armed pickets, mobile patrols, striking forces,
perimeter protection, infiltration, mechanical breakdown, external and internal
attacks, verification, unobtrusive watch, internal watch, intelligence collection,
top-secret papers, security information, leakage of information etc. Model
internal security schemes, containing jugglery of these words are available in all
district and police offices. The plans in the security schemes are intended as
 guidelines for police officers during security emergencies which is rarely the
case for various reasons. The first and foremost reason is that the model
schemes are anything but model, being too simplistic for this complex modem
age. The plans in the schemes do not touch even the fringes of the present
security needs. Secondly, the model schemes are based on outdated facts and
statistics which became irrelevant in postliminary periods. Though these model
schemes are expected to be updated from time to time, seldom are they touched.
This renders them irrelevant to a given phase of time. Thirdly, the security
guidelines in the model schemes can in no way make a claim to expertise. They
are simple suggestions based on common sense. Any police official with a
sound field knowledge can improve on them according to specific instances by
relying on his own savvy. For all practical purposes, these model internal
security schemes have become passe and impair. They have only historical
interests in the neoteric scheme of things.

Contents of model security schemes

The model security schemes enumerate in terrorem the likely sources of

threats to the country's internal security such as aggression by an alien power,
sabotage and subversive activities, communal riots, student unrest, extremist
activities, violent labour problems, natural calamities etc. The schemes
distinguish between peacetime threats and wartime threats and deal with each period with
various stages of approach like precautionary stage, preventive
measures and protective measures. What are striking in these schemes arc the
details of work to be attended to, like evacuation of lunatics, police-public
relations, peace committees, mobilisation of NCC and volunteer organisations
etc. But, unfortunately, there is nothing really instructive in these schemes for a
security officer of good field experience and sound common sense. The only
advantage the schemes provide is that all obvious measures are listed in a
raisonne nutshell for easy reference. But, as said before, albeit the measures
listed out are exhaustive as routine jobs to be performed in such disturbances,
they in no way help in tackling complex internal security challenges of the
present day. The reason for this is that the format of the schemes was conceived
decades back when challenges of internal security were simpler and on expected
lines. No serious thought was given to overhauling the format of the schemes
since then. The position though is similar in respect of the blue book which
deals with aspects of security for dignitaries, political compulsions helped to
update them as more and more dignitaries fell to the bullets of extremists. The
updating of the blue book is one of the plus points of the subservience of the
police to political masters. Yet, the blue book too needs a complete overhauling
on the basis of the new realities of security challenges and new perceptions and
conceptions about meeting such challenges.

Parameters of new security schemes

What the new blue book and new model internal security schemes need are
 guidelines on how to approach a security challenge and not what peripheral
matters should be attended to. Each security challenge of the present day is sui
generis and needs a specific approach depending upon the time, the place and
other circumstances of the challenge. It is too simplistic to imagine that a
common formula, however exhaustive it be, can tackle all internal security
challenges of the present day. The blue book and model internal security
schemes must lay down broad guidelines and the spirit with which security
challenges must be approached, the nature and classes of such challenges,
available methods of approach for each class of challenge, salient features of the
risks involved and precautions to be attended to, alternative courses of action
and assessment of the chances of success for each course under different
circumstances etc. The security guidelines must name the nature of security
threats under various situations and list out likely targets of sabotage under all
imaginable circumstances. They must be able to forewarn about potential
sources of threats and suggest ways and means of overcoming them and invenit
short and long-range plans to meet likely serious challenges. Such an approach
to security relieves pressure on prototypal security and shifts stress to creative
security and saves manpower and other resources from being wasted on
unproductive quotidian mobilisation. This worlds as a panpharmacon to the
under-utilisation of precious security tools by unintelligent routine deployment.

Problems of security operation

The problems of security are manifold. In the stage of intelligence

collection, the plurisie of intelligence itself poses the problem of blunting the
edge of really vital intelligence. Often, true and false information are insomuch
entwined that winnowing the one from the other becomes impossible; even if
such a piece of information is identified as possibly true, it gets emaciated by
the loss of credibility because of its locus standi in the midst of the heaps of
intelligence that are sometimes true and many more times mendacious. Even if
a piece of intelligence is winnowed out as true for further action, more often,
than not, the intelligence is an isolated piece of information and ipso facto
removed from the adversary's total action plan. Such a piece of intelligence,
many a time, leads to wrong conclusions and dangerous situations. Continued
research per procurationem the piece of intelligence is a must to make it
complete and fit for action. The research of available intelligence requires
motivated intelligence operation which is not possible without an elaborate and
anfractuous infrastructure. If the particular piece of intelligence does not fall
into place by such research, it may end up as an indign piece of information.
The useful intelligence that falls in place by research requires to be subjected to
analysis and study to test and substruct the situation and circumstances of both
the challenge and the means to amate the challenge. This again depends upon
the skill and experience of the individual or group of individuals who handle the
job. Often, both the research and analysis are carried out under the constraints of
time because of the proximity of the threat Even while security operation is
based on the research and analysis of intelligence, the basic intelligence and its
 sources are required to be kept as a closely guarded secret. Any leakage about
an impending plan may prompt an adversary to modify his strategy to superate
the security operation. This necessitates every security operation to be esoteric
in its substance and scope and carried out with perfect elements of surprise. This
creates problems of mobilisation and deployment without rousing suspicion.
The men to handle the security operation should be handpicked for competence
and probity. Their antecedents and recent activities must be closely examined
before they are cleared. It is the failure of security agencies to effectively carry
out such preparations that cost India Smt. Indira Gandhi. The briefing of
security operators about their job itself poses its own problem. The time of
briefing must be carefully chosen so that while the gap between the impending
operation and the briefing gives sufficient time to the operators for preparation,
it must not be so long as to give them louche ideas or to allow any inadvertent
actions to leak the plan. The timing of briefing and development must be
decided at high levels to ensure perfect secrecy. Another crucial problem of
security, operation pertains to the quantum of briefing: how much must be
briefed? Security operation basically involves the creative initiative of the
operator. His success depends upon his ability to assess the situation and pursue
better course of action sans loss of time. Too much briefing trammels the mind
and results in loss of creative initiative. Too little may fail to provide the insight
into salient features of the operation and leave the operator in a cul-de-sac. The
success of a security operation depends also on deciding how much briefing
must be made to each of the operators at disparate ranks and levels and how
much information and background knowledge can be fed to them. Here again,
liberal outlets for vital information create security risks. The primary
requirement of any security operation is a thorough study and analysis of
intelligence and other inputs, a detailed conception of the plan of operation with
adaptability for contingencies and painstaking in execution with a resourceful
mind and quick reflexes to meet such contingencies, if any.

Timing of operation

Timing is an essential ingredient of the security planning. Perchance, this is

the most significant single ingredient that decides the success or failure of an
operation. Apart from infusing the element of surprise, the time-factor provides
for making the strike while the adversary is mentally and physically least
prepared for it. Often, the right time helps the operation to succeed with right
contents which may not be possible otherwise because of the alertness of an
equally skeely and prepared adversary. The failure of Indian security forces to
capture Sivarasan and Subha can be attributed to the swither and inexplicable
cunctation of nearly 1 1/2 days for action after it was inadvertently made known
to the terrorists that they were cornered with no recourse for survival.
Unfortunately, the police force discounted the time-factor and the bevue ended
up in tragic perdition to the investigation which would have otherwise turned
out to be a world event, a plangent success story of the century.
Relevance of traditional approach

Not that everything of traditional approach to security is irrelevant today.

Certain aspects therein are indeed sempiternal tools in a security buildup. The
strategy of quadruple deployment namely static guards, armed pickets, mobile
patrols and striking forces yet constitute the skeleton of any security buildup for
a static target. The strategy takes the form of standing guards, personal security
officer, inner cordon, outer cordon and striking force in respect of a human
target. Its derivative for a mobile target is a security officer, escort, piloting and striking
force. The in-built deployment though it in no way pre-empts a
raisonne strike by a perficient outfit, perforce provides a semblance of
resistance to random strikes and gives a psychological advantage to security in
the form of a show of strength. However, it should be borne in mind that this
strategy in no way replaces specific security strategies; it only complements
them.

Security, its challenges and the strategies to counter it are ever-growing

phenomena. Security and its challenges change their colours like chameleons
and force strategies that counter them to keep pace pari passu. An effective
strategy must foresee future challenges and arm itself in advance for them.
Otherwise, the security is bound to be indign of its raison d' etre. It must be
said that Indian security agencies do not meet this cardinal need. Not that India
has no concern for its internal security. It is surrounded by bloodcurdling
terrorist outfits from all sides. The Kashmir separatist movement in the North,
the Akali separatist movement in the west, the ULFA in the East, the LTTEs in
the South and the Naxalites in the Centre comminate a corps perdu, India's
internal security and very survival. The number of new security outfits coming
up is an indication of India's concern for its security. The triste part of the spiel
is that India yet does not know how to face these gauntlets to its very existence
and the misplaced emphasis on quantity in the form of a new security outfit
every time a serious security breach shakes the country, rather than building
quality, complicated the matter. Indian security standards have not made
kenspeckle headway pro rata to the rise in expenditure incurred thereon in
recent years because India is yet to gain an insight into the salient features of
security in the modem complex political world that learnt to achieve its goals
by comminations and bullets. Until India learns the basic lessons of modem
security, tragic deaths and destruction are bound to continue. Ergo, India must
act pronto.

SIX

SOCIAL JUSTICE AND LAW ENFORCEMENT

Professor B. Kuppuswamy in his book "Social Change in India" apropos of
'Paradox of the Indian Situation Today' writes, "On the one hand there is a
conscious, deliberate effort to change the social structure as a result of the
assimilation of new social values. Because of the struggle for political freedom
and the desire for economic reconstruction, new social values have been
incorporated in society, based on the ideals of social justice and equality of
opportunity. On the other hand, there is the fear that the old social values are
being repudiated and destroyed by the values of social justice and equality,
which pose a challenge to the past privileges based on caste, aristocracy, age,
sex etc. The farm labourer, the factory worker, the student, and women are
repudiating the authority which denied them social justice and equity". This
perennial conflict between privileged and non-privileged, of reactionaries and
revolutionaries is the sema of zoetic society. The clash of interests and values
steeped in an instinct for survival is the hallmark of social change. It is here the
state comes into the picture as the arbiter elegantiarum, as a beacon to guide
both the pace and path of social change through public education and
legislation. The social awakening which is possible through public education is
a sine qua non for social change which can only be formalised through
legislation as a statutorily accepted social value to make its violation a criminal act. A
good piece of legislation backed by effective enforcement works as a catalytic agent in
the process of social change.

Social conflicts

Peter Worsley in 'The Third World' writes, "In those countries which fail to
achieve the take-off and relapse into the hungry frustrations of stagnation or
regression, all kinds of conflict from anarchic protest to regional schism or even
communist revolution could flourish. A revolutionary leadership could easily
replace those nationalist parties which have lost their social-reforming zeal."
The state can be impervious to the ascensive zeal for social reform only at its
own peril. Social inequality and social injustice as starting points of a vicious
circle wherein they are perpetuated cannot be the situation a welfare state seeks
to protect from the dynamics of positive change which as a natural force of
unending frustration expresses by peaceful means in principo and emeute as a la
dernier ressort if the state errs by protecting the vested interests of inequality
and injustice and fails to discharge its responsloilities towards positive social
change.

Social awakening in India

The veteran journalist Shri D.R. Mankekar in his book titled " A Revolution
of Rising Frustrations" beautifully analyses the situation of ascensive social
awakening in India. "The fact is that the worm is at last turning, falsifying the
prophets who have averred that the Indian masses are too underfed, too
lethargic, and too fatalistic to rebel against their fate and violently wrest from
the rulers their elementary human right - the right not only to survive but to
improve their lot." The new awakening roused the esurient expectations of the
long-repressed and infested segments of the gens de peu and fomented their
neoteric hopes of being extricated from age-old repression. The government of
democratic India responded favourably to the aspirations of the infaust segments
of its populace, non obstante the not-so-inopinatc resistance from the privileged
lobbies, by enacting legislations with the potential for far-reaching changes
towards establishing social isonomy and justice. However, the zest in enacting
the legislations is not amated by the political will to enforce them, though some
isolated attempts arc made here and there. Experience in the field dictates that
some thought should go to the modalities of the social legislation and their
enforcement to make the whole process genuinely effective as a vehicle for
faster growth towards social equality and social justice.

Challenges of social equality

As French thinker Auguste Compte noted, a nouveau regime can emerge

only if man assumes responsibility for his actions and makes his ain society.
The changes in social institutions do not occur by themselves, but by a positive
moral desire and commitment in that direction. This active aspect of social
change manifests in intellectual assertions for deliberate social legislations and
their effective enforcement. The theory of "Challenge and response" as
expounded by the great British historian Arnold Toynbee, points out that a
society can grow if it can constructively respond to challenges. The challenges
are often social and internal and every civilisation as a facet of the society can
learn from the failings of its quondam civilisations. Active responses to the
extant gauntlets of social equality and social justice against a background of ci-
devant nonfeasance should be the foundation on which social legislation and its
enforcement mechanism should be broadly based.

Social justice vs legal justice

Social justice is imprimis an informal social process rather than a formal

legal procedure. It is the moral standard of a society to which its laws and
actions conform. The injustices and legal disabilities against certain sections of
the socfety enshrined in many rules of Indian society in bygone days are now a
matter of the past. It is only now that the need of liberty, equality, security,
freedom from want, fear and frustration as parameters of social justice are
realised. Social justice ex consequenti demands preferential treatment for the
socially backward and repressed classes who are at a disadvantage in respect to
others.

Social law as 'cleansing forces'

Johan Galtung defines "Structural violence" as "The dominance of one

group over the other with subsequent exploitative practices" in "Peace
 Thinking". The pirlicue of this statement implies that preferential treatment by
the state to certain segments of the society to separate its dominance by the
others becomes at the outset an act of injustice and structural violence by the
state. However, as Jerome Skolnick preconised, violence is a louche mulicous
term whose meaning is established through political process, ipso facto acts of
institutional violence are comme ilfaut if perpetrated by the state in the larger
interests of the society as they fall beyond the ambit of the concept of violence.
Frantz Fanon, an African psychologist in "The Wretched of the Earth" calls
violence intended to restore self-esteem and do away tyranny as ‘Cleansing Force'. Jean-
Paul Sartre confirms the idea when in 'Preface to Fanon', he says,
"Violence, like Achilles' lance, can heal the wounds that it has inflicted" indeed
while it is institutional violence in society's interests.

Social justice in Indian Constitution

The Indian Constitution in its Preamble preconises social justice and equality
of status and opportunity to all and in article 14 constales fundamental rights
while it declares that the state shall not deny to any person equality before law,
or equal protection of the law. The Article 15 interdicts any kind of
discrimination on grounds of caste, creed, sex, birth etc. However, the
Constitution recognised the inadequacy of legal equality in meeting the
exigencies of social justice when it recognised the necessity of special measures
to uplift socially deprived segments and constates in sub-section (4) of Article
15 that the constitutional provisions do not prevent the states from making any
special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally
backward classes of citizens or the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. This
exception in the constitution to legal isonomy is the cornucopia of most social
legislations intended to mispraise the crude ancien regime and usher in a dream
world of social equality and social justice.

Social laws

Law is an instrument of both the continuity of social behaviour and of social

change. Manu had said, ' Immemorial custom is transcendent law'. Social
consuetudes metamorphose into social laws in rerum natura and perpetuate
social customs. Professor B. Kuppuswamy in his book "Social Change in
India" writes about two functions of the law. He writes, "According to one
view, the essential function of law is to reinforce the existing modes and to
provide a uniform procedure for the evaluation and punishment of deviance
from the existing rules. In other words, me function of law according to this
view is social control and the major problem of law is to design the legal
sanctions to minimise deviances and to maintain social stability. According to
the other view, law could be more dynamic. It has not only the function of
social control but it has also to bring about social change by influencing
behaviour, beliefs and values". The social laws of India are devised to bear the
kiaugh of the dynamic function of bringing about social change by influencing
 behaviour, beliefs and values in addition to social control. In Indian society
where social inequalities more suo, form the bedrock of living for historical
reasons and embedded in the Indian psyche as consuetudes and basic social
rules more majorum, the awakening and metabasis to new values of social
equality and social justice from the deep slumber of a millennium are not easy
to come by. Though isolated calls for certain changes are heard mostly from the
self-made spokesmen of the oppressed classes because of the influences of
liberal western thoughts, the albatross of orchestrating these thoughts to the
mosaic of the laws of the land falls on the government. Social laws function as
catalysts of social change in the Indian situation.

Social changes through laws in India

Most of the important social laws were enacted in India in the face of
plangent opposition from reactionaries inveterated in the terra firma of the past
practices. The queasy practice of polygamy was made hors la loi and divorce
was legalised by the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955. The barbarous praxis of
untouchability was made punishable by enactment of the Untouchability
(Offences) Act in the same year in conformity with Article 17 of the Indian
Constitution. The Hindu Succession Act of 1956 is a meith in bringing
daughters on pareil with sons in respect of property inheritance. The Hindu
Adoption and Maintenance Act of 1956 strengthened the position of women in
regard to the right to adopt. The Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 tried to deliver
nubile colleens from the menace of dowry. The Factory Act of 1948 raised the
minimum age of workers to 14 years and provided for annual medical
examination of minor workers. The Employment Exchange Act of 1959
provided for state help to unemployed citizens to get jobs. The Children Act of
1960 provided for special care of children. All these incipient legislations of
independent India on social matters were enacted as vindicated by the directive
principles of state policy in line with the fundamental rights enunciated in the
Indian Constitution. Article 24 of the Constitution sui juris interdicted
employment of children below 14 years of age in factories.

British India too saw much of momentous legislations conducive to change

and social justice. The Sati Prohibition Act of 1829, the Hindu Widow
Remarriage Act of 1856, the Female Infanticide Prevention Act of 1870, the
Special Marriage Act of 1872 providing for civil marriages and intercaste
marriages as amended in 1923, the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, the
Payment of Wages Act of 1936 providing for regular payment of wages, the
Industrial Dispute Act of 1929 providing for settlement of disputes, the Trade
Union Act of 1926 which legalised trade unions, the Workmen's Compensation
Act of 1923 providing for compensation to workers for accidents, disablements
and death on duty, the Act of 1922 defining a child and preventing a child below
12 years for employment, the Act of 1931 and its 1946 amendment reducing
hours to work a week are major keeks to social change via social laws.
 The trend to usher social change through new legislations or amendments to
old ones is en train even in this neoteric age. The Debt Relief Act of 1976, the Bonded
Labour Abolition Act, the Protection of Civil Right Enforcement Act of
1976 and amendments thereon, the 1983 amendments to the Dowry Prohibition
Act are important instances of such a nisus.

Social norms and social laws

Whenever the enactment of law is consectaneous to a change in social

norms, the law as a device of legal sanction against deviations there from social
norms, succeeds in legalising these neonate social norms. However, the law
proves ill-equipped and falls into desuetude while it seeks to introduce
intempestive social norms as a means of social justice for 'forced compliance'
as Festinger called it in 'An Analysis of Compliant Behaviour'. The paradigm
is the law regarding dowry and child marriage being not as effective as that
pertaining to monogamy for lack of social force behind it.

Public education

Social laws can be social laws only if they are of the society, from the
society and for the society. They have relevance in a society only if they are
unrevocably concinnous with its everyday lives of its members - in terms of
their ken of the laws and its general acceptance. Social laws that are abstruse
and unacceptable to the plebeian are destined to atrophy because they lack en
arriere the inherent mechanism of compelling society to comply with their writ.
It is this sense, that social laws which are lex non scripta are indited with the
stamp of approbation of the state by popular demand, though the process from
the antipode can be inchoated if their assimilation by the society is assured
through active propagation. The effectiveness of social laws depends entirely
on their assimilation by society and the strength of propagation and publicity
that follows the enactment of the laws. This need of the social laws being
balked is the quiddity of the serious setbacks faced in making certain social laws
like the Dowry Prohibition Act or the Child Marriage Act effective. The
enactment of social laws that are intended to accord primacy to social norms
must be preceded by intensive fieldwork to introduce the newell and make them
acceptable to the society and enactment should be resorted to only when the idea
becomes ripe enough to be assimilated by the society because the symbiosis of
social norms and social laws is inseparable. Haste brings definite waste in
respect of the enactment of social laws.

Clarity of concepts

A kenspeckle feature noted in most social laws is the lack of perspicacity in

definition of the concepts involved. It is an understandable glitch when
commonsense concepts like dowry, labour, discrimination, practice of
untouchability, compensation or even marriage makes the quandary of the
 commission or noncommission of an offence wafer-thin and often a matter of
opinion based on interpretation of the concepts involved. Though postliminary
amendments to the law based on field experience and interpretations of the
concepts by courts attempt to impale the concepts to a prim form, the inchoate
ambiguity continues to confound the issues in the popular mind, weakening the
credibility of the law itself. The louche spectrum of the impair interpretations of
a concept can turn an offence to innocence and more penniciously, an innocent
person into a criminal according to the predilection of the investigating officer.
The subjectivity involved in understanding the law by individual investigating
officers makes the law a feared and abhorred tool of harassment that is distanced
by both the aggressor and the victim, and by complainants and witnesses. This
subjacent weakness in laws renders getting justice impossible, ergo defeating
the very lelos of the laws. Social laws deprived of social credibility cannot
survive for long. Postliminary efforts to infuse credibility by redefining the
concepts to implete the loopholes cannot repair the credibility loss experienced
in society. It is for this reason, concepts in social laws must be formulated with
utmost caution.

Reaching the deep malady

Another major hurdle in calling social change through law is the failure by
the authors of the laws to clearly comprehend and indite in them the causes and
mechanisms of the immanc social evils they intended to contain through the
laws themselves. The abhorred social practices that manifest as social evils are
only the external symptoms of a serious malady inveterate in the psyche of the
society. Attempts to strike at these skin-deep symptoms prove infructuous in
reaching the malady embedded in the vitals of the system. Often, the persons
comminated by the shallow social laws are simple innocent plebeians who are
caught unawares by the laws while they tread the path laid by their ancestors by
wont or perform acts they consider essential in the existing social
circumstances. The external symptoms, sine dubio, should be fittingly treated if
the malady is to be deracinated with all traces of its existence. However, such
approaches are secondary to the concerted attack on the ingrained malady which
forms the cornucopia of those symptoms. This exigency is generally balked in
most social laws. Only a springe mind with full grasp of the social problems in the
circumstances of the existing situation can indagate and handle levers sine
prole to set in motion the laws that can strike at the core of the social malady.
This requires advanced study of these immane practices and their social
backgrounds involving psychological and anthropological analysis apart from
adequate public discussion within the society. Unfortunately, no enactments of
social laws are preceded by such vigorous exercises and the impotency of the
laws to excoriate the social evils are inevitably consectaneous. The laws should
provide the pollicitation of punishing the prime perpetrators of the social
injustices rather than catching secondary or tertiary commis to the commission of the
offences.
Social situation and social laws

The glisk of undesirable social practices leading to painful hurtling of laws

often are the consequences of the existing social situations. A poor father of
four girls and a boy in the circumstances of prevalent admissibility of dowry in
the social psyche, nonobstante the criminality of the act, cannot but accept
dowry for his son to assure a reasonably contented married life for his daughters
even at the risk of being immanacled as his conscience is clean about accepting
the dowry. A person living in a closed society in a village has no alternative but
to practice untouchability against his conscience to save himself from ostracism
unless he is a zealous social reformer prepared to sacrifices his own interests for
the cause. In a competitive business world involving child labour or meagre
wages, an attempt by an individual to stand out in compliance to laws against
child labour and nether wages is a sure way to close down his enterprise. The
state, in such circumstances, should tackle an fond the social situations that
breed such immane symptoms and the law to be kind and understanding in
saving of innocent people caught in the social clamency. The scope for
corrective and remedial action and rehabilitation must form an integral part of
social laws to avoid the impression about the social laws as indulging in
supererogations to catch trivial slips of everyday life and ergo popularly
abhorred. Effectively orchestrated public education and concomitant vigorous
social service programmes aimed at changing specific social situations that
boost socially unjust practices must form an integral part of every social law.

Special accoutrements of social laws

All social laws must have some postern features incorpsed to make them
effective as vehicles of positive social change in view of the delicate ground the
laws cover in their operation wherein people in their interpersonal relationships
are often involved in the hide and seek game of everyday life. The social
offences are both trivial and serious-trivial in the nature of the acts and serious
in the nature of its consequences. It is almost impossible to demarcate when an
act in a given social situation is trivial and when it attains serious proportions.
Also, differences in norms and values and varying sensitivity and moods further
complicate the issue. It is not possible to arrive at a uniform definition of
concepts like harassment, practice of untouchability or compensation as
acceptable to all situations. The laws warrant special accoutrements to counter
the nonesuch quailings e re nata as discussed in the ensuing paragraphs.

Presumptions of law

Social injustices are perforce committed by the pollent on weak and hapless
people. In the present argument-oriented judicial system where mother justice
takes sides on the basis of the kind of the lawyer being engaged on the strengths
of money and power, no social law can do justice to the weak and feckless gens
de peu who are misdight and nonpareil to their adversaries for the juste
 rencontre except in rare obvious cases non obstante the state sponsored legal-
aid programmes. The cabal of the versute gens de condition resorting to social
evils necessitates some sui generis safeguards to be inherent in social laws to
make up for the nether social position of the wronged person and checkmate the
malengine and pravity of the powerful. Appropriate amendments to the Indian
Evidence Act to incorpse provisions of sweeping presumptions in social laws
against the accused persons on whom a prima-facie case is made out, with
provisions to prove innocence lying with them, is likely to lessen the ineluctable
disabilities of the oppressed people coram lex. Though such presumptions are
extant to varying degrees now in some social laws, the presumptions must be
made a toute force in all social laws. Such presumptions save the wronged
persons.from proving the wrong usually done at the convenience and terms of
the powerful guilty person sans evidences in the social situation under his ain
prise.

Vicarious liability

The special laws must provide for vicarious liability that suspends over the
head of the social group concerned even though there is no evidence to
incatenate him with the offence. Such criminal liability on the el patron while it
checks him from encouraging or indirectly fomenting commission or such
offences through his acolytes in the social group, also drives him to prevent
those injustices in his group.

Minimum punishments prescribed

There should be mandatory minimum punishments prescribed in all social

laws so that the laws become inherently mordant, independent of the malicho of
the pollent guilty persons. The social laws should abnegate the behoofs of the
anticipatory bail unless the person against whom a prima facie case is made out
satisfies the court about his innocence. The present queasy trend of prompt
anticipatory bails to fugacious social offenders can be brought under control by
this measure.

Rehabilitation

Each social law must provide ample opportunity for compromise on mutuus
consensus with an in-built raisonne mechanism prescribed to ensure corrective
and remedial measures in fit cases not involving serious guilt where such a
compromise is certain to ameliorate the position of the wronged persons. The
penal sections of the social laws inter alia must provide for huge fines and
compensations with provisions to streamline the fines and compensations for
rehabilitation of the victims or their dependants.

Protection of witnesses
 The social nature of the offences in social laws makes witnesses to the
offences who are insiders of the society in most cases, reluctant witnesses for
the fear of reprisals from the society though injustice done to one of them sui
juris turns their clinamen against the guilty. A provision and concomitant
device in social laws to protect the interests of the witnesses en revanche to their
ready cooperation helps investigation of the social offences.

Time limits for investigation and trial

It is rightly said that justice delayed is justice denied. It is strikingly so in

social situations where the exigencies of survival and coexistence and future
interests forces the parties generally inter-related to apostatise and bury the past
cicatrix, leading to the weak and oppressed again submitting to the tyranny of
the powerful for the sake of survival, had the law glitched to take its course tout
de suite to prove to the world the futility of the social law. In the circumstances,
each social law should prescribe time limits for the continuation of the
investigation and trial. The possibility of summary trials for social offences also
should be probed into and employed as extensively as possible to ensure the
galvanic trial of social offences.

Social justice authority

The reason d'etre of social laws is the extirpation of social inequalities and
the establishment of a just society. The telos can be better achieved if the laws
are structured to effect compromises to rehabilitate a bon droit the wronged
persons, preceding the invoking of penal sections in lost cases. The social laws
true to their intentions must seek a device by which every case of social wrong
draws the attention of the authority for frack intervention and on-the-spot
solution which is statutorily binding on both the parties to avoid the crush of the
penal sections.

The device can be made a reality by the constitution of Social Justice

Authorities at taluq levels under a judicial magistrate with a police officer, an
officer of the social welfare department, a prominent lawyer, a representative of
local women's organisations and a representative of the legal aid board as
members. The Authority must work as a team in the taluq to hear cases of
socially unjust practices on the spot and adjudicate them then and there without
resorting to judicial technicalities and adjournments. The Authority must have
an office with a multi-channel telephone working round the clock with a widely
publicised number by dialling which anybody without giving identification can
report socially unjust practices so that the Authority as a team reaches the
destination within twenty-four hours a tout propos and passes infrangible orders
pleno jure on-the-spot per saltum on hearing the concerned parties. The
Authority must exercise de regle pernoctation over the process of the
compliances to the orders and pass sentences in cases of default. In such a
system, the address and telephone number of the Authority being known in
 every village in the taluq is the clavis of perficient chevisance because then
anybody wronged can readily lodge querimonies for redressal. The approach of
the Authority in adjudication must be that of an adviser or well-wisher rather
than that of a government organisation steeped in technicalities. The Authority
should be able to reach every village in the taluq at least once a month. The
leiimoli behind the set-up is to affect compromises and rehabilitate victims by
levying fines and compensations if necessary.

Social police

The administration of social laws is a specialised task requiring specialised

skills in the Police force handling the job. The force has to be understanding
and circumspect in its approach though tenacious when circumstances warrant.
It should have the right ken of the social circumstances and their problems with
a deep sense of commitment to social justice. These operators should be kind
and devoid of the malfeasance of harsh police methods and should never forget that they
are dealing with distinct problems which are the outcome of historical
reasons and special social situations, that they are dealing with a wider social
malady through the individual symptoms in their hands for solution and ergo
there are no villains in real sense of the term, that they are social doctors
interested only in exercising cancerous growths from society. This special
decession from problems in policing necessitates special care in recruitments to
the job to draw people of appropriate mental makeup and impart specialised
training to reinforce those special attributes. The police also requires periodical
programmes of sensitisation for the cause of social justice with exhaustive
theoretical inputs. These officers should be aufait in social legislations which
are proliferating in geometrical proportion. This exigency necessitates the
constitution of a special Police force to handle social laws which may be called
'Social Police' distinct from the normal police in charge of regulatory and other
police duties. The social police should have its parallel organisations &t all
levels as per specific needs with distinct recruitment, training and sensitization
facilities. An extra-ordinary commitment to the social cause and out-of-the-
normal alacrity in tackling social problems should be the hallmarks of the social
police.

Social courts

Delayed trials of social offences are more a reality than an exception while
promptitude is a virtue de rigueur for tackling social offences. The inquietude
of delays are often caused by lack of commitment to social causes. The same
can be said about easy anticipatory bails and easy release of persons arrested for
social offences and light sentences to convicted persons or failure to appreciate
available evidences which leads to frequent acquittals. Such a predicament for
social offences when they are treated on par with conventional cases in courts is
au naturel because of the popular perception of the social offences as trivial
social problems. A judiciary sensitized is de rigueur if the cause of social
 justice is to be served in the trial stage. The establishment of social courts to try
exclusively social offences of all hues is en regle in the circumstances and
should prove efficacious. As distinct from conventional courts, a committed
judiciary should be the bedrock of these courts where hand-picked magistrates
or judges committed a fond to social justice and specially sensitized to the social
causes preside. The courts, owing to their specialisation in trying social
offences would be in a better position to appreciate the special circumstances of
the offences and therefore appreciate evidences in the right perspective and with
sympathetic understanding. This specialisation also facilitates fast disposals
while the sensitization helps to see through the gravity of the offences so that
unduly light sentences are not pronounced and persons arrested for social
offences are not wantonly released on bail.

Social prosecutors

Similarly, specially handpicked lawyers should be posted as prosecutors to

the social courts. These prosecutors should be selected on the basis of their
commitment to social justice and undergo a course in sensitization to social
causes prior to their posting to handle social offences. A case of social offence
would be feracious in the hands of a prosecutor who is committed to social
justice and specially sensitized for social causes.

Social justice and changing social norms

Social justice is a glidder concept that changes its hues with time depending
on prevailing social norms and social values. No age including ours has a right
to call its own norms and values as absolute and peremptory though we might
believe it to be so. In this sense, social laws are peregrine and passe beyond
their immediate time frame. This deciduous nature of social laws necessitates a
circumspect approach in enforcing them as the elements of mens rea in the
sense it is used in conventional offences is absent in these cases. Thus, as the
face of social justice changes its countenance from time to time, the emergence
of new social laws is au nature!. The enforcement machinery should keep pace
pari passu with these developments and be semper paratus to differentiate
justice and injustice in terms of the extant laws which are spawned by the
fugacious social needs and values of the time. The effective enforcement of
social laws reinforces reigning social norms and values by giving them teeth and
ipso facto helps hail the social justice in terms of the norms and values of the
period.

SEVEN
DOWRY DEATH CASES AND THEIR
INVESTIGATION

Nature created women different from men with a definite purpose. Balance is
stillness and stagnation; imbalance is motion and progress. Nature designed life
and action by means of the imbalance brought about in the traits of men and women.
In the process, women find themselves at the receiving end. They ended up as the
weaker half of society by their very nature and are naturally handicapped in a world
of men, by men, for men. In a world where strength commands charity and
weakness receives cruelty, a woman is at a great disadvantage. She has suffered
all types of cruelty and humiliation all along centuries with patience and in silence.
This part of woman is symbolised, in tradition by calling her as the Mother Earth
who bears all sufferings. The cardinal principle of the survival of the fittest applies
to the weak, natural attributes of woman which renders her less fit for survival than
man. She must live at his mercy and on his charity, silently bearing all his atrocities
unless and until society in an enlightened mood comes to her rescue.

Legislations against atrocities against women

The immane approach of the stronger world to its weaker counterparts has to
be countered with strong arm methods of the state power. In an enlightened age
such as this, people in public life are sufficiently sensitized to this issue and more
and more legislations come up to stop stronger people from riding over the weak
and meek. India too has several legislations that have become acts to protect its women
folk.

Atrocities against women in India are mainly rape and unnatural offences,
dowry deaths, abduction and kidnapping for various purposes and outraging their
modesty apart from minor acts like various marriage offences, dowry and other
harassments, insulting the modesty, causing miscarriage without consent and
prostitution. Most of these offences are punishable under the Indian Penal Code:
in sections from 375 to 377, for rape and unnatural offences, abduction and
kidnapping girls for various purposes being punishable in sections from 364 to 369,
offences related to marriage being subjected to penal provisions in sections from
493 to 498, outraging the modesty of a woman in section 354 and insulting the
modesty in section 509 being offences. Section 314 makes causing miscarriage
without woman's consent, a punishable act. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act,
1983 (No. 43/83) provided for in camera trial of rape cases and also enlarged the
scope of rape cases by placing the burden of proving innocence on the accused
person apart from making penal sections more mordant, particularly in cases of
custodial rapes by public servants. The Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women
and Girls Act, 1956 with the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls
(Amendment) Act, 1986 and rules framed by states u/s.23 of the Act deal with
offences relating to immoral traffic in women and girls.

Distribution of rape cases in Karnataka

More than a quarter of about 160 to 170 rape cases reported every year in
Karnataka are from the region of Bangalore District including Bangalore City with
abreak-up of 19% to the discredit of Bangalore City and 7.7% to Bangalore district,
excluding Bangalore City. Chitradurga is the other district in Karnataka with a high
figure of 8% to its discredit and it with Bangalore City and Bangalore District, share
the first three places among those having the highest number of rape cases in
Karnataka. The tiny districts of Uttara Kannada with 1.3% and Bidar with 1.4%
account for the least number of rape cases in Karnataka every year. (The figures
provided here are based on official statistics of the Corps of Detectives, Bangalore.)

Dowry deaths

The Karnataka police took the first major step in tackling the menace of
increasing dowry death cases in 1980 by issuing orders vide its law circular No.4787
dated 16-9-80 that all cases where a woman dies within five years of her marriage
have to be investigated by an officer of or above the rank of Deputy or Assistant
Superintendent of Police with the post-mortem to The held by a team of two doctors.
The circular also made it mandatory that the body of the deceased is to be disposed
off only after blood relatives of the deceased see the dead body. Law circular No. 4846
dated 4-12-82 increased the operational time limit from marriage to death
from five to ten years. It is the Criminal Law (2nd amendment) Act-1983 that made
an inquest by an executive magistrate mandatory in the case of unnatural death of
a woman within seven years of her marriage. The subsequent definition of 'dowry
death' upheld seven years as the time limit between marriage and death to draw the
charge of dowry death. The Karnataka police in its law circular No. 4897 dated
23-4-87 made it mandatory that all cases of unnatural death of a woman within ten
years of marriage should be investigated as a case of murder until otherwise proved.

Distribution of dowry death cases in Karnataka

Bangalore city has the dubious distinction of accounting for mor" than 26.3%
of 190 to 200 dowry death cases reported every year in Kamataka while Gulbarga
district with about 9.3% and Bangalore district excluding Bangalore City with about
7.8% to their discredit stand at second and third places. Even tiny Bidar district
outweighs other districts by accounting for nearly 5% of dowry death cases reported
in Kamataka every year. The credit of minimum dowry death cases in Karnataka
goes to Kodagu district with just 0.5% of the state figure. The coastal districts of
Dakshina Kannada and Uttara Kannada, each accounts for just 1% of the state
average. The districts of Bellary and KGF each accounts for about 1 % of the dowry
death cases in Kamataka. More than 1/3 of the dowry death cases of Kamataka are
reported from Bangalore district, inclusive of Bangalore City. (The figures
provided here are based on official statistics of the Corps of Detectives, Bangalore.)
 In Kamataka, drowning, burning, poisoning and hanging are the usual means
of committing suicide in dowry death cases. Of these, drowning accounts for the
highest number of dowry death cases, followed by burning and poisoning in that
order.

Investigation of dowry death cases

Dowry death cases have become sensational topical issues these days with the
public being highly sensitised to the menace of the offences with the unfortunate
swelchie of cruel practices and circumstances deliver an innocent girl at death's
door. All institutions of society including the government, press, women's or-
ganisations, judiciary and police handle dowry death cases on a special footing.
Each such case outrages the patience of thinking people and rouses passion and
outcry against the perpetrators of the offence. The police too give special impor-
tance to the investigation of these cases and closely supervises the investigation
process. In the circumstances, an insight into the investigation of dowry death cases
and proper understanding of the spectrum of challenges posed and how they are
met is in the interests of both the public and investigating officers. It must be borne in
mind that no investigation can succeed without public cooperation. And the
public, particularly people aggrieved by such unfortunate incidents, can contribute
to the progress of investigation if they have knowledge of its due process. With
this in view, salient features and parameters of dowry death investigation are
outlined in this work.

Medical evidence

investigation of dowry death cases has special links with the science of forensic
medicine because of the special nature of the investigation. Dowry deaths are
figuratively called bedroom deaths. In most cases no outsider including the
investigating officer can have any knowledge about the circumstances and events
that led to the death. Secondly, the offenders being the custodians of the dead body
and the scene for many hours after the death till they volunteer to make its
occurrence known, have all the time in the world to eliminate or tamper with any
clues. In the circumstances, the investigating officer is completely at the mercy of
medical experts to interpret the cause of death.

Often, the mode of death noticed, be it asphyxia, drowning or burning, may

prove to be post-mortal; ipso facto suggesting homicide in place of suicide. Only
forensic medicine can provide decisive proof to the investigating officer.

The success of the investigating officer in investigating dowry death cases

largely depends upon forensic medicine experts. Sans proper briefing from the
latter, the investigating officer may not realise the importance of noting the
profusion of bleeding or marks of inflammation in deciding whether wound is
antemortal or not. Again, in a poisoning case, the investigating officer may
overlook the importance of recording the time when the deceased ate last, how many
 hours thereafter the first symptoms of poisoning were noticed, what were those
symptoms and how many hours thereafter death occurred. Thus, the interaction
between the investigating officer and forensic medicine experts is crucial to give
the investigation a direction.

Collection of evidence

Dowry death investigation has to address certain problems in the field in

collecting evidence and examining witnesses.

These offences take place within the family circle. Sometimes, though blood
relatives of the deceased volunteer evidence in the heat of trauma, a gradual
reconciliation would be the normal tendency. Therefore, sound evidence is rarely
forthcoming and difficult to sustain.

Dowry death being an offshoot of the relationship of wife and husband and
veiled in a shroud of secrecy, even the parents of the deceased may be unaware of the
hardships the deceased underwent at the hands of her husband and his relatives
in the process of the dowry death.

If the investigating officer is lucky, he may succeed in collecting some evidence

of cruelty. The next stage at which he would find himself would be the girl's death.
There would be an absolute void in between with no clues or evidence of what
happened or no eyewitnesses to vouch for that. Clues on the dead body and
surroundings are likely to be tampered with by the offenders.

Investigations are witness-oriented. A dowry death case being primarily a

family affair, independent witnesses refuse to involve themselves. And partisan
witnesses are too polarised to be credible.

It is in these circumstances that investigating officers have to trace witnesses,

conduct purposive examinations and undertake directional recording of statements
after proper analysis of the offence and likely charges.

Dowry death legislations

The dowry death cases are offences primarily under central acts namely the
Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961 with its amendments of 1984 and 1986 and certain
sections of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 as amended by Criminal Law (2nd
Amendment) Act, 1983. In spite of attempts during amendments to avoid am-
biguities in some sections of the earlier acts, it is patent that there are still several
louche terms that need interpretation by the court. The term 'in connection with
the marriage' while defining dowry in section 2 of the Dowry Prohibition Act is
unspecific about the flexibility of the word 'connection' and gives way for its
subjective interpretations as well as that of the term 'dowry'. The same word
'connection' brings in a similar impression while defining 'dowry death' in Section
 304B of the Indian Penal Code and section 113B of the Indian Evidence Act while
declaring in connection with demand of dowry', ipso facto rendering the incatena-
tion between the offence of dowry death and dowry demand uncertain and open for
discussion. In the same sections, the phrase 'soon before her death' raises the
question, how soon before? Similarly, the words 'relative of her husband' that figure
in Section 498A of the Criminal Procedure Code, section 304B of the Indian Penal
Code and section 113A of the Indian Evidence Act in no way provide exactly what
is intended to be defined; the scope of the words there is too vast and includes even
the blood relatives of the deceased as they are also relatives of the husband after
the marriage. Another important term that defies full comprehension is 'likely to
drive' in Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, where the word 'likely' by its very
meaning is indefinitive and open for subjective interpretation. The scope for
divergent interpretations of these terms in the comparatively new acts do create
problems during investigation of the cases until convention assigns them definite
meanings.

Difficulties in investigation of dowry death cases

The difficulties faced during dowry death investigations can be classified thus:

I. Those encountered in collection of evidence.

1. The victim does not give information about her harassment while alive
because of Indian cultural values, the need to continue to live with in-laws,
feelings of alienation in the in-laws' house and parental pressure to conform
and adjust.

2. There are no independent witnesses to the commission of the offence as it

is committed within the four walls of the in-laws' house.

3. The evidence can be easily tampered with because the scene of the offence
is at the disposal of the in-laws until they volunteer to make the offence
public.

4. Dying declaration is either not taken or is taken at the in-laws' convenience

as the -victim continues to be in their charge; further, the relatives of the
deceased often reach the scene very late.

5. The victim's parents are often at a disadvantage to fight for justice since
they are in an area where the in-law could wield considerable influence, at
the scene of the offence.

6. Both relatives and neighbours are reluctant witnesses in an in-family

offence.

7. The victim's relatives, also being relatives to the accused, resort to com-
promise for mutual benefit with the passage of time and thus useful wit-
nesses are lost.

II. Those encountered in interpretation of certain terms of law.

Following phrases in dowry death laws are unspecific and pose problems of
comprehension.
1. Sec. 2 ofD.P. Act (Defintion of Dowry); "in connection with the marriage".

2. Sec. 304B IPC & 113B of the Indian Evidence Act;

"Soon before her death"
"in connection with demand for dowry".

3. 498A, 304B IPC & 113A Indian Evidence Act;

"Relative of her husband"

4. 498A IPC.
"likely to drive".

Ill. Those encountered with outside agencies.

1. The Executive Magistrates who are to conduct inquests depute subordinates

who are not duly empowered to conduct inquest. Also the delay in conduct-
ing the inquest and inefficient and nonprofessional handling results in
substantial loss of evidence.

2. Prosecutors being not adequately sensitized to handle such sensitive cases.

3. The court of law failing to treat the cases with the special treatment
warranted by the nature of the cases and insisting on eyewitnesses and
independent witnesses who are usually unavailable in dowry death cases.
Also the considerable delay in disposal of these cases, as they are treated as
unimportant family offences, with hearings at long intervals. This prob-
lem in Bangalore is overcome by the institution of special courts.

Presumptions of law

Law by sections 113(A) and 113(B) of the Indian Evidence Act relieves the
investigation of cases of death of girls within seven years of their marriage from
the special nature of difficulties by the reason of the crime being committed in the
intimate circle of the offenders. The law provides that the court trying the case may
presume that the accused persons committed the offence if it is proved that the
victim was subjected to cruelty by the accused persons inter alia. The presumptions
made easy the investigation of these otherwise impossible cases.

While the presumptions under section 113(B) of the Indian Evidence Act is
 applicable to prove dowry death cases u/s.304(B) IPC, section 113(A) is applicable
to prove abetment to commit suicide u/s.306 IPC within seven years of the marriage.
The latter presumption benefits investigation of cases while a girl commits suicide
under harassment for reasons other than dowry also by her husband or in-laws
within seven years of the marriage. The lapse of the law lies in not providing the
coverage of the presumption when the death was caused by homicide for reasons
other than dowry by her husband or in-laws within seven years of the marriage
while the benefit is available for cases of suicide under the same circumstances and
homicide for dowry reasons under the same circumstances. This renders investiga-
tion of cases of homicide of girls by husband and in-laws within seven years of
marriage which poses the same difficulties as suicide cases under the same cir-
cumstances an impossible task and there are any number of such homicide cases
that were acquitted which would have been convicted by the benefit of the
presumptions u/s.ll3(A) of the Indian Evidence Act if they were suicide cases.
Amendment of concerned laws may be necessary to avoid this loophole in law.

Investigation of dowry death cases

What is dowry?

1. Anything transacted or agreed to be transacted between the parties of the

marriage is dowry.

2. Any transaction or demands for such a transaction which was not agreed
upon by concerned parties in connection with marriage falls beyond the
scope of dowry.

What constitutes offence in dowry death cases?

1. Offences under the Dowry Prohibition Act:

a) Giving and taking dowry after 2-10-1985 is an offence except customary

presents, given to bride or bridegroom in keeping with the donor's financial
status without any demand. The offence is punishable u/s: 3 of the Act.

b) Demanding dowry from the spouse's relatives or guardians is an offence

from 2-10-1985. The offence is punishable u/s: 4 of the Act.

c) A person failing to give to the bride dowry received by him as customary

presents; or to her children or to parents in that order if she dies because of
unnatural cause within seven years of her marriage. The offence is punish-
able u/s: 6 of the Act.

2. Offences under the Indian Penal Code:

a) Husband or his relatives subjecting a woman to harassment to coerce her or

 her relatives to meet dowry demands or because of their failure to meet the
demands and the woman soon afterwards dies of bodily injuries under
unnatural circumstances within seven years of her marriage. The husband
or his relatives who subjected her to harassment are punishable for commit-
ting the offence of dowry death u/s: 304(B) IPC r/w 113(B) of the Indian
Evidence Act.

b) Husband or his relatives subjecting a woman to harassment to coerce her or

her relatives to meet any unlawful demands or because of their failure to
meet the demands and the woman commits suicide within seven years of
her marriage. The husband or his relatives who subjected her to harassment
are punishable for the offence of abetment to commit suicide u/s: 306 IPC
r/w 113(A) of the Indian Evidence Act.

c) Husband or his relatives for reason of dowry demand intentionally subject-

ing a woman to any conduct that is possible to drive her to commit suicide
or grave self-injuries and the woman soon afterwards dies of bodily injuries
under unnatural circumstanccs within seven years of her marriage. The
husband or his relatives who subjected herto the conduct are punishable for
dowry death u/s: 304(B) IPC r/w 113(B) of the Indian Evidence Act.

d) Husband or his relatives intentionally subjecting a woman to any conduct

that is possible to drive her to commit suicide or grave self-injuries and the
woman commits suicide within seven years of her marriage. The husband
or his relatives who subjected her to the conduct are punishable for the
offence of abetment to commit suicide u/s: 306 IPC r/w 113(A) of the Indian
Evidence Act.

Ill. NOTE:

1. Woman dying within seven years of her marriage under unnatural cir-
cumstances is the first and foremost essential ingredient of all dowry death
cases.

2. The charge of murder takes precedence over charges under dowry death. In
all cases where murder is proved u/s: 302 IPC, the case should be charge-
sheeted for murder u/s: 302 IPC.

3. In cases where murder u/s: 302 IPC could not be proved for lack of evidence
regarding circumstances and events that lead to the death, the case may be
considered to be tried for dowry deaths u/s: 304(B) IPC if other essential
ingredients are fulfilled.

4. In suicide cases where dowry death u/s 304(B) IPC could not be proved for
lack of evidence regarding dowry demand and also cruelty or harassment of
the woman for the purpose soon before the death, the case may be considered
to be tried for abetment to commit suicide u/s: 306 IPC if other essential
ingredients are fulfilled.

5. A case is liable to be tried under section: 304(B) IPC or 306 IPC depending
upon the ingredients of the case if the following two facts are proved:

a) that the woman died within seven years of her marriage under unnatural
circumstances.

b) that she was subjected to cruelty by her husband or his relatives.

6. The dowry death cases may also include charges of criminal intimidation,
wrongful confinement, common intention, abetment, criminal conspiracy
etc, depending upon the evidence available in the case.

7. The presumptions in the Indian Evidence Act u/s: 113(A) in case of abetment
to commit suicide u/s 306 IPC and u/s 113(B) in case of dowry death u/s
304(B) IPC relieve the investigating officer from the burden of proving that
the accused persons abetted the suicide to prove offence u/s 306 IPC and
caused the dowry death to prove offence u/s 304(B) IPC.

8. What is cruelty by husband or his relatives?

a) Harassment of a woman by her husband or his relatives to coerce her or

her relatives to meet unlawful demands or because of their failure to meet
the demands constitute cruelty to the woman by her husband or his
relatives.

b) Intentional conduct by a husband or his relatives that is possible to drive

a woman to commit suicide or grave self-injuries constitute cruelty to
the woman by the concerned husband or his relatives.

9. Inquest over the dead body.

Inquest over the dead body of a woman by an Executive Magistrate is a must

if she dies within seven years of her marriage under one of the following
circumstances.

a) She committed suicide.

b) There is reasonable suspicion about her death.

The inquest may be held by a police officer if above conditions are not fulfilled,
but a relative of the deceased makes a request for inquest.

IV. Field investigation of dowry death cases:

 1. Investigation of dowry death cases poses some special difficulties because
of the special nature of the dowry death offences. The increasing awareness
of unjust treatment to women and the incremental appreciation of the need
for an attitudinal change in society's approach to women by educational and
penal methods require the investigating officer to ensure that those respon-
sible for dowry death are suitably convicted. This necessitates all-out efforts
to investigate dowry death cases in spite of the inherent difficulties. Most
of the measures discussed here are in the form of guidelines for effective
investigation rather than legal obligations.

2. The information of the death is usually received in the Police Station either
from the head of the hospital to which the victim was admitted or from the
deceased's husband and his relatives who are likely culprits. In either case,
the information is bound to be the bare facts devoid of any allegation.

3. Report of Unnatural death of a woman within seven years of marriage:

In all cases of unnatural death of a woman within seven years of her marriage
under suspicious circumstances reported to a Police Station, the following
measures are to be undertaken forthwith.

a) The case should be registered as a UDR case u/s: 174 Cr. P.C. r/w 176
Cr.P.C.

b) The Sub-divisional Magistrate of the area with information to District

Magistrate should be immediately addressed about the death with a
specific request for an immediate inquest over the dead body by the
Sub-divisional Magistrate personally.

4. An officer not below the rank of PSI from the Police Station should reach the scene
without loss of time and personally examine the scene, dead body
and witnesses in preparation for the inquest. He should prepare a rough
sketch of the scene with all details and measurements. He should isolate the
scene for future examination, colour photographs of the dead body, showing
injuries and the surroundings should be taken in various angles.

5. Dying Declaration:

In case of report of a medico-legal case with death concerning a woman

within seven years of her marriage, an officer not below the rank of CPI
should reach the scene of offence without loss of time and personally
examine the body of the victim with due regard to decency and law with the
assistance of women at the scene and arrange to record the dying declaration
from the victim. He should duly brief the medical officer recording the
declaration about points on which information should be elicited in refer-
ence to the circumstances of the incident as he had noted from his personal
 observations. He should ensure that the likely accused persons stay away
from the victim as far as possible till the declaration is recorded.

6. Information of dowry death:

In the first available instance, as many blood relatives of the deceased or

victim should be examined, specifically regarding cruelty to the deceased
or victim by her husband and his relatives and circumstances of the incident.
ISaprimafacie case of cruelty is made out, a formal detailed report covering
marriage of the deceased and its date, details of dowry demands and dowry
received and by whom with names of witnesses to all these transactions,
specific instances of cruelty and harassment of the deceased for dowry and
illegal demands by her husband and his relatives with names of witnesses,
circumstances of the death as they know and conduct of the alleged accused
persons along with details of documentary evidences and names of witnesses
should be obtained from the blood relatives of the deceased and a case should
be forthwith registered u/s: 304<B) IPC or 306 IPC and other relevant
sections under IPC and D.P Act.

7. Deputy Superintendent of Police investigates the case:

An officer of the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police takes up the

investigation of the case within 24 hours of the registration of the case and
personally visits the scene and examines the dead body and the surround-
ings. He discusses the case in detail with the PSI or CPI who conducted
preliminary investigations of the case earlier.

8. Inquest:

The investigating officer takes active interest in the inquest of the case
conducted by the Sub-divisional Magistrate. He briefs the SDM about the
salient features of the case as per the investigation done till then and help
him in examining appropriate witnesses and recording evidences ap-propriate to the case
from both the scene, surroundings and the dead body.

9. Examination of witnesses:

The offenders and their relatives are avoided as far as possible from being
examined during the inquest. The blood relatives of the deceased and
independent witnesses from the neighbourhood who intimately know the
deceased are given preference. The 10 should assist the SDM in securing
appropriate witnesses in the interest of the investigation.

10. Examination of the scene:

The dead body, scene and surroundings are thoroughly searched, and
 measured for every possible clue and evidence regarding the crime irrespec-
tive of whether they look relevant to the case at that point of time. Nothing
should be left for chance. Even minute particles and insignificant things
may prove to be of immep-se evidentiary value as the investigation progres-
ses.

11.Panchas:

Persons having close links with the offenders must be avoided from becom-
ing panchas during inquest or seizure process.

12. Post-Mortem:

The 10 prepares a detailed list of clarifications to be sought from the forensic

medicine experts including nature and cause of various external appearances
and wounds on the dead body and their interpretations in reference to the
clues and evidences at the surroundings; opinion about the alleged instru-
ment of death having any bearing in the case etc.

13. Discussion with forensic medicine experts:

The 10 makes it a point to sit with the expert who conducted the postmortem
examination of the dead body and discuss the case threadbare on forensic
medicine bearings of the case. Viscera, blood, urine and other relevant
fluids and pieces of organs from the dead body are sent to FSL for analysis
and opinion.

14. Forensic Science Laboratory:

The 10 sends articles seized from the scene to FSL or other experts for
opinion.

15. The 10 holds periodical discussion with the expert who conducted post-mor-
tem, at least once a week regarding forensic medicine aspects of the case till
he is satisfied.

16. Blood relatives of the deceased see the dead body:

After the postmortem the dead body is handed over to right persons and the
10 ensures that the dead body is not disposed of until the blood relatives of
the deceased see it.

17. Arrests:

All the accused persons against whom a prima facie case is made out are
arrested without giving them opportunity to move the court for anticipatory
bail. All applications for hail should be fought tooth and nail. The culprits
 who succeed in obtaining anticipatory bail are subjected to arrest and
released as per bail conditions. The Government should be moved for
suspension of the accused person from service if he is a public servant.

18. Interrogation of arrested persons:

The accused persons should be thoroughly examined and interrogated about

the crime until they give out clues and evidences about the crime.

19. Recoveries u/s: 27 of the Indian Evidence Act is effected from the accused
persons wherever possible.

20. Possibilities of confession u/s: 164 Cr.PC. by offenders is probed.

21. The chance of involuting approvers u/s: 306 Cr. P.C. in appropriate cases is
surveyed.

22. Examination of blood relatives and recording their statements.

The blood relatives of the deceased are thoroughly examined on all aspects
of the case and their statements are recorded. The examination forms the
bedrock of further investigation of the case. The examination covers all
incriminating incidents involving the deceased and her relatives and the
accused persons, the details of cruelty and harassment to which the deceased
was subjected and the details of the circumstances of the death and the
conduct of the accused persons. The 10 ensures that as many specific
instances of cruelty with details come on record and as many witnesses and
documents regarding various facts of the case like date of marriage, dowry
demand, dowry acceptance, cruelty, harassment for dowry or illegal
demands and circumstances of the death as possible figure in those state-
ments.

23. Documents and records as evidences:

All documents and records that figure in the statements of the blood relatives
of the deceased and throw light on various facets of the case like date of
marriage, dowry demand, dowry acceptances, cruelty, harassment for dowry
and other illegal demands and the circumstances of death are seized as
evidences in the case. The documents and records include marriage certifi-
cate, marriage invitation card, marriage photographs, dowry contracts;
letters, bills, receipts and bank instruments concerning payments of dowry,
letters or diaries of the deceased or accused persons touching upon dowry,
dowry demand, cruelty and harassment, documents in Police Station, family
courts, women's organisations or hospitals regarding complaints of cruelty
or treatment taken for injuries caused by cruelty, attendance of accused
persons at relevant places, marriage registration documents etc.
24. Proving the authorship of handwriting:

The handwritings in letters and diaries seized during the investigation are
proved for their authorship by obtaining specimen writings from the con-
cerned under attestation of witnesses. An attestation is obtained preferably
from independent witnesses who have reasons to be acquainted with the
handwriting.

25. Tracing of witnesses:

All witnesses figuring in the statements of the blood relatives of the decedent
and in various documents and records seized are traced and examined on
relevant matters.

26. The natural witnesses from the neighbourhood of the scene of crime and
disinterested witnesses who have knowledge about matters touching the
crime are traced and their statements on relevant matters are recorded.

27. Examination of witnesses and recording their statements:

Recording statements of persons who do not throw any light on the case is
avoided as far as possible.

28. The examination of witnesses should be purposive with reference to the

ingredients of the charges in issue and the line of investigation. The
recording of the statement should be directional in keeping with the interests
of the prosecution. Recording of unnecessary and irrelevant matters are
avoided in the statement to bring clarity and brevity to the main issues.

29. Investigation into the circumstances of death:

Thorough enquiry regarding the persons present at the scene during the
incident that caused the death of the deceased is conducted and all those
persons are interrogated about the events and circumstances of the death.

30. The whereabouts of all the accused persons at the time of the incident
causing the death are ascertained with the help of proper oral and documen-
tary evidences.

31. Proper investigation is conducted regarding the persons who noticed the
death first, time and circumstances. The persons should be thoroughly
examined regarding the circumstances that led them to the scene and what
they saw there.

32. Appropriate witnesses are examined regarding the conduct of the accused
persons preceding and succeeding the incident that led to the death.

33. Eye witnesses to the death:

The possibility of having eyewitnesses to the incident, particularly from the

neighbourhood should be thoroughly probed. Even evidences of what they
saw or heard from a distance may prove useful in the investigation. Their
statements are recorded u/s: 164 Cr. P.C. if found necessary.

34. Who can be useful witnesses:

The persons who saw the deceased for the last time and also who talked to
her last should be traced and intelligently examined for possible clues about
the crime.

35. The women from the neighbourhood of the scene and old ladies prove useful
witnesses as the deceased is likely to have talked about her problems with
them from time to time.

36. Every attempt should be made to trace and record statements of the friends
of the deceased to whom she would have confided her difficulties either
orally or by letters.

37. Immediate provocation:

The death cannot occur without an immediate provocation or a criminal

conspiracy behind it. The 10 should detect it with adequate evidences.

38. Respectable men of the area like village headman, community chief or a
partriarch are examined for useful information about the offence.

39. Burning of the dead body without inquest and post-mortem:

In cases where the dead body is burnt against local custom without inquest
and post-mortem and a case of dowry death is registered only at a later stage,
the circumstances themselves suggest attempts to eliminate evidences of a
crime. In the circumstances, independent witnesses from the area, preferab-
ly including the head of the village and community, are examined and their
statements are recorded to establish the local custom which is violated by
the offenders.

40. In cases where the dead body is burnt without inquest or post-mortem,
people who saw the dead body are examined in detail regarding unnatural
appearances on the dead body and in the immediate surroundings. The
forensic expert's opinion is sought about the case on the basis of this
information, and a detailed history of the case as made out from the
investigation done till then.

41. Examination of stove in a burning case:

In a burning case, the stove at the scene is seized and examined by an expert
to refute the possible defence claim of an accidental explosion as the cause
of burning.

42. Wounds on the dead body:

All wounds on the dead body are examined for inflammations and extravasa-
tions which prove ante-mortem injuries and suggest violence and cruelty
before death ipso facto facilitating charge u/s: 304(B) IPC by providing
evidence of cruelty soon before the death.

43. What acts constitute cruelty:

Any wilful act on the part of the husband or his relatives which is likely to
drive a woman to commit suicide constitutes cruelty. Respectable women
from the locality are examined and their statements are recorded as opinions
to prove whether specific deliberate acts under issue are likely to drive in
normal circumstances a woman to commit suicide and thus meets the
definition of cruelty.

44. Finalisation of the case:

Where the deceased is proved to have been subjected to cruelty in connection

with a dowry demand soon before her death, the case can be charged u/s:
304 (B) IPC. Otherwise, the case can be charge-sheeted u/s:306 IPC if it is
proved to be a suicide case.

45. Time limit to finalise the case:

Investigations of dowry death cases preferably be completed within a month

and not later than three months under any circumstance. Extension beyond
this period would be self-defeating as the witnesses are likely to turn hostile
as the heat of the pain of death subsides and the parties could compromise
as they are relatives.

46. Section 6 of Dowry Prohibition Act:

In cases where the dowry received is not given to the deceased's child or
returned to her parents when there is no child. Section 6 of the D. P. Act can
be invoked and the concerned persons are charged.

47. Special instructions to officers of the Corps of Detectives:

 An officer of the COD to whom a case of dowry death is entrusted for
investigation takes up the case within 24 hours of the order being issued
excluding the time taken for his journey and exclusive of any other respon-
sibility at his hand unless special written permission is obtained from the
supervising officer for delaying the job for further 24 hours in exceptional
cases. He takes up the investigation de integro.

48. The IO should personally visit and examine the scene of offence, examine
afresh and record statements of the decedent's blood relatives and important
witnesses, discuss the case, with local police officers and previous IOs of
the case, study the case file in detail and hold an exhaustive meeting with
the medical expert who conducted post-mortem examination. He should
continue to hold periodical meetings with him during the course of the
investigation.

49. He should discuss all facets of the case with his supervising officer imme-
diately after taking charge of the case and obtain instructions regarding the
further course of the investigation.

50. A new 10 should re-examine all witnesses, previously examined by his

predecessor in COD to acquaint himself with various nuances of the case.
However, it is only in instances where the re-examination throws further
light on the case that additional materials should be recorded as statements.

V. Forensic medicine in investigation of dowry death Cases.

As circumstances and events that lead to dowry death are more often than not
buried in the shroud of familial secrecy, the investigating officer finds himself stranded in
the barren ground of silence and darkness during the process of his
investigation. There would be no witnesses to speak about what conspiracy or
provocation led to what catena of events that ended with the death. This grey area
about the vital stage of the offence is peculiar to the investigation of dowry death
cases. The investigating officer can superate the gauntlet by more and more
drawing from the cornucopia of knowledge of forensic medicine and science.
Unless the investigating officer fully avails himself of the benefits of the latest
developments in these disciplines, hecannot do full justice to his work.

1. Forensic knowledge can be employed to establish following facts about a

dowry death case:

a. The cause of death.

b. Whether the death is accidental, suicidal or homicidal and whether

bodily attacks are ante-mortem or post-mortem.
 b. The events that led to the death.

d. The circumstances and surroundings in which the death took place.

2. Forensic knowledge can be applied during prosecution for the following

purposes:

a. As evidences to decide issues towards proving an offence.

b. As evidences to repudiate claims made by the defence.

3. The prerequisite of employing forensic knowledge in investigation of an

offence is threefold:

a. Detailed observation of the scene and surroundings of the offence and

purposive collection of clues, depending upon the nature of the case.

b. Detailed observation of the body of the victim and purposive collection

of clues depending upon the nature of the case.

c. Careful and purposeful autopsy of the dead body and collection of clues
depending upon the case.

4. Though the Executive Magistrate during the inquest and the forensic
medicine expert during the autopsy arrive at a fairly definite idea about the
case through the collection of clues from the dead body and surroundings,
the investigating officer cannot afford to leave that part of the investigation
entirely at their hands as ultimately he is responsible for the entire investiga-
tion of the case. He has to discharge his responsibilities in two ways:

a. Assisting and guiding the officers in their work with reference to future
needs of the investigation and circumstances of the case.

b. Making his own notes about his personal observations about the clues
of the case.

5. The dead body, the scene and surroundings should be studied in minute
details with a questioning mind. This should be done in four ways:

a. Noting down in detail every interesting and common feature noticed with
sketches and measurements.

b. Taking colour photographs from different angles and varying distances

of all interesting and common features noticed. Video recording is
preferred.
 c. Careful lifting of interesting and common clues and evidences in the
presence of reliable panchas with detailed information and measure-
ments about their location and other relevant facts for future analysis.

d. Specific instructions to experts regarding what to look for during the

postmortem.

6. It is prudent to collect all available clues and evidences as none at that early
stage of an investigation can predict what clues and evidences prove to be
vital for the case in future, what shape the investigation may take in coming
days and how the case may end up. Special attention should be paid to
following particulars.

a. The marks of struggle on the dead body.

b. The location of the dead body at the scene and its postures.

c. Wounds, colourations and all types of marks on the body with exact
locations, measurements and specifications.

c. The apparel and other articles on the body and their condition.

d. Blood and other bodily fluids found on the body and apparel.

f. The articles noticed on or at close proximity of the dead body and their
location and distance from each other.

g. Empty containers noticed at the scene, their nature and exact location
anent to the dead body.

h. Signs of struggle and other unusual occurences at the scene.

i. Any strange odour on or near the dead body and at the scene and its
nature.

j. The position of doors, windows and electric fittings at the scene and their
condition.

k. Marks of blood and other fluids at the scene and surroundings.

1. All important and unimportant articles noticed at the scene.

7. Burning case: Burning is a common mode of death in dowry death cases in

India. A case of death by burning suggests either accident or suicide or
homicide or post-mortem burning to obliterate the corpus delecti.
The possibility of post-mortem burning to obliterate evidences require the
investigating officer-to keep his eyes, nose and ears open for all types of clues and
evidences on the dead body and the scene so that he is prepared for an unexpected
turn of events as the investigation progresses. He cannot be selective in collection
of clues and evidences as it may turn out to be a case of either poisoning, throttling
or assault with the post-mortem burning to conceal evidences. In the circumstances,
the investigating officer should look for the following clues on the dead body and
at the scene.

a. The regions on the body where bums are extensive must be ascertained.
This should be shown with a sketch of the body. It helps to ascertain
whether the burn is accidental, suicidal, homicidal or postmortem.
Uniform burning of several parts suggests the possibility of murder.

b.The smell of kerosene or other fuels on the body, apparel and y the scene.

c. The position and location of any containers of fuel at the scene and their
distance from (he body.

d. The location and condition of matchsticks, stoves and electrical instal-

lations at the scene and their distance from the dead body.

e. The condition of electrical wiring at the scene.

f. Marks of burning at various places and walls on the scene.

g. Marks of stove burst at the scene. The stove should be seized and sent
for expert opinion on its condition..

h. Noticeable wounds or marks of assault on the body.

i. Viscera and blood should be preserved for analysis to detect carbon

monoxide.

j. The expert conducting the postmortem should be sought opinion regard-

ing soot particles in the lungs and windpipe as marks of inhalation during
the ante-mortem burning..

k. Opinion should be sought regarding vesicles, signs of congestion and

inflammation in living tissues to ascertain whether the bum is ante-
moritem or not.

l. The expert should be instructed to look for signs of death by methods

other than burning and postliminary postmortem burning.

8. Poisoning case: Death by poisoning is a common feature in dowry deaths.

Such a death indicates either suicide or homicide and even accident in rare
 cases. Postmortem administration of poisoning, though possible, is a rare
occurrence. The investigating officer should look for the following clues on
the dead body and at the scene.

a. The container from which poison was used should be seized before
panchas and sent for analysis to FSL along with the viscera from the dead
body.

b.Traces of vomit from the scene should be sent to FSL for analysis.

c. The viscera, blood, urine and fluid from mouth and nose of the dead body
should be sent to FSL for analysis.

d. The nails, lips and body of the deceased should be examined to ascertain
whether they have turned blue.

e. The time when the deceased last took her food, the time "of the first
symptoms of poisoning and death should be ascertained.

f.The symptoms of poisoning noticed in the deceased should be ascertained.

g. The amount of poison likely to have entered the system of the decedent
should be ascertained from witnesses and forensic experts.

h. The nature of food materials present in the stomach and its time of
consumption must be ascertained.

i. Opinion of FSL experts should be sought on absorption of the poison by

the stomach to decide whether the poisoning was ante-mortem or not.

j. Opinion of experts should be sought on the antidotes or other medica-

tions administered to the victim and the possible time of the administra-
tion in reference to the time'of poisoning as noticed in the stomach.

k. A report on the medical history of the -deceased should be obtained

wherever possible.

1. Opinion regarding redness, ulceration, softening and perforation of the

stomach and intestines and their spread and diffusion that suggest
poisoning should be sought from experts.

9. Drowning Case: Drowning can be either accidental, suicidal, homicidal or

postmortem in nature. The investigating officer should look for the follow-
ing additional clues on the dead body and at the scene.

a. The position and location of the dead body in water in reference to the
likely place of drowning.

b.Objects tied to the dead body.

c. White foam in the mouth, nose and lungs of the deceased indicates
ante-mortem drowning. The foam must be sent for analysis to FSL.

d. The expert conducting the postmortem should be asked for information

about aquatic organisms and debris in the air passages and stomach and
presence of water in lungs and stomach of the dead body which also
suggest ante-mortem drowning. The debris •should be tested for the
presence of its like in water at the place of death.

e. Mud in finger and toe nails suggests struggle during drowning; the mud
from the nails and the floor of water may be sent to FSL for comparison
to decide isogeny.

f. Aquatic or other materials grasped by the deceased suggest a struggle

while drowning. The nature of aquatic creatures in the water must be ascertained to
decide about the possibility of the creatures having caused postmortem cuts on
the body of the decedent.

The details of abrasions and cuts on the body and an expert opinion as
to whether they are post-mortem are crucial during the process of the
investigation.

The dead body, should be carefully examined for both external and
internal marks of violence before or during the drowning.
The blood samples from the left and right side of the heart of the dead
body along with a sample of the water in which drowning took place
should be sent to FSL for haemolysis analysis which suggests whether
the death was caused by drowning or not.

Experts should be advised to conduct diatom tests. The presence of

diatoms in brain, bone marrow or liver suggests ante-mortem drowning.
Death by hanging: Hanging can be either suicidal or postmortem. In rare
cases, it can be homicidal also. Often, hanging would have been enacted
after the victim was killed by throttling or strangulation. The investiga-
tion officershould look for the following clues on the dead body and at
the scene. The material used for hanging should be seized and sent for examination
to ascertain whether the ligature marks on the dead body match with the
material. The scene should be keenly observed for furniture and other bodies near
the place of hanging to ascertain the process of hanging.

The details of ligature marks on the body of the decedent, covering then-
exact location and spread, shape, colour, depth and nature should be
carefully examined and noted. The dead body should be examined carefully for other
marks of violence and force and all injuries on the dead body should be carefully made
note of. The fingernails of the dead body should be examined for blueness.
The expert conducting the post-mortem examination should be asked for
information about bruising of the soft tissues beneath the ligature mark
that suggests ante-mortem hanging or strangulation. The possibility of intense
venous congestion of the lungs suggests strangulation. The dead body must be
examined to detect the congestion.

A ligature mark about the thyroid cartilage suggests hanging while any
mark below the thyroid cartilage suggests strangulation,
Fracture of thyroid bone and thyroid cartilage suggests strangulation or
throttling; thyroid bone fracture is common in hanging.

j. The presence of saliva, oozing out of mouth shows ante-mortem hanging.

k. Effusion of blood along the ligature mark suggests ante-mortem hanging.

l. If common external and internal features of asphyxia are absent, then the
hanging is definitely postmortem which suggests homicide.

11. It is often possible that the mode of death noticed is postmortem and intended
to conceal a criminal act. Burning or hanging and sometimes even drowning
are the modes employed to conceal a criminal act committed by other
methods mostly by assault or poisoning. In the circumstances, the investigat-
ing officer should take care to collect clues from the dead body and the scene
to cover all eventualities regarding the true cause of death as revealed in
later stages of the investigation.

12. The forensic analysis of clues should be oriented to decide whether the
alleged mode of death is ante-mortem or not. If the alleged mode of death
is found to be postmortem, it suggests two possibilities.
.
a. That a different mode was employed to cause the death which should be
established by the clues collected from the dead body and the scene, and

b. The case is likely to be a case of homicide and attempts have been made
to conceal the evidences and the cause of the death.

If the investigating officer adequately employs his common sense and intel-
ligence during the preliminary stage of the investigation while examining the dead
body and the scene and collects all incriminating clues and evidences without
restricting himself to the apparent cause of the death, no criminal can fool him and
deflect him from the right line of investigation.

Marriage is often called the second birth in a girl's life; it brings an entire
 metamorphosis in the form and contents of her life and in the process exposes her
to inopinate adaptation problems. It is an irony of nature and social customs that
it is the girl who is delicate in nature rather than the man who is selected for this
difficile gauntlet of transformation in the process of familial socialising. Per case,
the gentle and amenable caractere of the female breed expose hers to the natural
selection tor the purpose. In the process, death of the most unfortunate of them by
felo de se or homicide because of the grind of the circumstances has become an
unfortunate phenomenon. Dowry is only one though primus interpares among
various immane manifestations of adjustment problems to which the tender psyche
of a young girl is exposed after her marriage. An integrated approach to all these
symptoms of adjustment problems to which a girl is suddenly exposed while her
persona is yet unprepared to meet the gauntlets alone can bring deliverance to the
fairer sex of the human genre. The entire process of social legislations and their
enforcement is only a distant link in the whole catena of luctation warranted to
achieve this end.

EIGHT

POLICE DOGS FOR THE NEW AGE IN

KARNATAKA

Police dogs are the invisible eyes and ears of the police in crime detection at
both prevention and investigation stages. As an aide of detection at the
prevention stage, police dogs are perficiently employed as detectors of bombs in
suspected sabotage cases and of narcotics in suspected drug trafficking. Thus
police dogs play prominent roles in meeting the present acute gauntlets of
policing, namely providing security to men and places and curbing smuggling
and trafficking in narcotics. Police dogs are proved to be as helpful as
fingerprint experts in identifying criminals, their hideouts and stolen properties.
In addition, police dogs can be employed for law and order duties apart from
guarding men, place and properties.

Police dogs sui juris form an integral part of a well-equipped police force
anywhere in the world. The Indian police also made a beginning in re police
dogs long ago though much is yet to be done to realise their best services. The
Karnataka police too has a small unit of dog squad in its fold. This discussion is
limited to the dog squad of Karnataka with suggestions to enable it to grow from
its present small form.

The Police dog squad in Karnataka functions as a part of the armed reserve
 unit of the Bangalore city police. Though there are various regional police dog
units under its supervision apart from the police dog unit of the Bangalore city,
under its direct control and supervision, the relationship between the mother unit
and various regional units remains largely undefined and louche. Further, a
state-level unit like the police dog squad being a part of the armed police unit of
Bangalore city police indicates a messy and arbitrary growth and structuring.
This needs to be rationalised. A dog squad under the exclusive charge of an
officer of the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police is required to be created
in the Criminal Investigation Department of the state to which the police dog
squad should belong in terms of its usual functions and usefulness. The police
dog squad primarily belongs to the Crime Branch of the State Police setup as its
aide in detection work. Usually, armed policemen and officers arc posted in
Karnataka as handlers in the ranks of PCs and HCs and supervisory officers of
the dog squad in the ranks of PSIs and Pis. These are temporary postings and
therefore fail to elicit any abiding interest in those concerned. Further, there
being no distinct identity for these officials and no additional monetary benefits
involved, the Karnataka police dog squad fails to instil any commitment in its
personnel.

The Karnataka Police must create an exclusive cadre of handlers and dog
masters with distinct seniority and promotional opportunities upto the rank of
the Chief Dog Master at the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police.
Constables selected from the armed or civil police must be absorbed to the dog
squad as assistant handlers after six months of training in handling dogs. An
assistant handler must be eligible to be promoted as a handler in the rank of HC
and he in turn as a Dog Master in the rank of PSI; me next promotion would be
to Senior Dog Master at the rank of PI and thereafter as Chief Dog Master at the
rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police. A system of dog allowances for each
of these ranks make the cadre financially attractive and the job financially worth
seeking. The present setup of the Karnataka police dog squad has
professionalism in its ranks only upto the rank of Head Constables. The
supervisory officers from the rank of PSI upwards are sheer amateurs, devoid of
any professional expertise in their work. Occasional training in Tekanpur or
other places cannot instil professional commitment and expertise when the
officials know that their career is outside the police dog squad and their interest
in police dogs is transitory. This non-professionalism at supervisory levels
makes supervision and control of the police dog squad in Karnalaka absolutely
meaningless. The officers for the ranks of PSIs, PIs and Deputy
Superintendents of Police in the police dog squad should be selected from
professionals either by promotion or direct recruitment from outside. This
makes these officials able to identify their career with the effectiveness of the
police dog squad.

Though the dog squad of the armed police unit of Bangalore city police is
supposed to be a training unit for police dogs and handlers from all over the
stale, no infrastructure for handling such a responsibility is available in the unit.
A senior handler often functions as a trainer for pups when required and no
programme schedules to train handlers is available, not to speak of any refresher
or special courses either to the dogs or their handlers. A full-Hedged breeding and
training centre for both the police dogs and their handlers must be setup as
the point d' appui of the dog squad under a senior Dog Master of the rank of
Police Inspector as the trainer. Pups to be trained as police dogs and PCs to be
trained as assistant handlers should have regular courses of the duration of six
months. The centre may also conduct refresher courses of shorter duration for
handlers and their dogs and special courses for dogs and handlers, participating
in dog shows and police duty meets, apart from research on breeding, feeding,
training and performance.

The part of police dogs in Karnataka in routine security checking of

passenger luggages at airports is nil. The absence of roles in security measures
against such international threats like hijacking, bombing of planes, trafficking
in narcotics etc tells a bleak story about the use of scientific methods in the
state's policing. The function of police dogs here is confined to checking of the
airport during VVIP visits. As airport security vigilance is an important
function of policing, the Karnataka police should consider creating a detachment
of dogs, trained in detection of explosives and narcotics for its major airports
under a Dog Master with a complement of handlers and assistant handlers.
Though India is fast growing to be a transit centre for narcotics from both the
Golden Triangle and Golden Crescent meant for Western countries and
Bangalore city is developing to be a centre of shipment to various exit points, no
visible effort to check this menace is patent in Bangalore city police force.
Training a couple of police dogs for the detection of narcotics could be a good
beginning in this direction. Though the Karnataka police had two sniffer dogs
in its squad till recently, a new beginning was made in 1989 to train pups with
the help of the Border Security Force in the detection of explosives and
narcotics. However, the efforts could not be carried outjusqu au bout for want
of imaginative policy towards transfers of higher ranks to inspire concerted
efforts in this direction.

The regional units of the dog squad of Karnataka police presently function as
part of the armed reserves of the district, where each unit is situated, under the
overall supervision of a nonprofessional in the field like a Reserve Police
Inspector. The regional units must be viable units with a minimum of three
dogs, three handlers, three assistant handlers, a vehicle, two drivers and a
sweeper-cum-cook, under the control and supervision of a Dog Master in each
district. Karnataka has a post of handler or assistant handler for each dog. The
natural inadequacy of one handler for a dog because of the human failures like
absences, sickness etc make the allocation of handlers to dogs on permanent
basis impossible, thus denying a vital need of dog management. This failure has
naturally reflected adversely on the health, efficiency, performance and
management of police dogs in Karnataka. It is a primary need that each dog is
placed under the charge of two officials as handler and assistant handler on a
permanent basis to facilitate atleast one between them being always available to
take care of the dog and the dog is not required to be exposed to anybody other
than its appointed handlers.

The police dogs in Karnataka are fed with wheat, rice and other cereals inter
alia. This diet needs to be replaced with bread and dog biscuits whichprovide
complete and wholesome nutrition and avoid the unhygienic and fluctuating
quality standards of the amateur cook. The rexine boards measuring 4' x 5'
which are used as beds for police dogs in Maharastra can be conveniently used
as beds for police dogs in Karnataka too because they are easy to wash and
clean daily. There is no systematic approach in Karnataka for purchase of foods
for dogs. The right of sale of the foods for a year in bulk to the dog squad must
be alloted at higher levels by tenders every year to avoid misuses and leakages.
The purchase of lifesaving medicines of dogs poses financial problems if the
drug stockist refuses to sell the medicine on credit in the present system. Often,
handlers are required to pay ror the medicine from their pockets with the hope
of recouping it later. A permanent advance of say Rs.500/- to all regional units
and Rs.lOOQ/- to the Bangalore city unit may prove to be a panacea for this
financial malady. There are no specific guidelines as standing orders or manual
provisions available in Karnataka to ensure healthy practices in dog
management that guarantee improved performance of the dogs. This absence is
the cause for each handler engaging his dog in his own way, leading to all types
of abuses and ill-treatment of dogs. It is necessary to prepare a police dog
manual containing standing orders and specific instructions on the management
of police dogs. There is no uniform method laid down to assess the
performance of handlers and their dogs and their mutual compatibility. This has
resulted in an extremely casual and mechanical approach on part of handlers to
their dogs. An integrated approach to assess the performance of each handler
and assistant handler on continuous basis would certainly boost the level of
performance by inculcating in them an attitude of commitment. A system must
be evolved wherein a worksheet for each handler is drawn every month by the
Dog Master with marks alloted to the handler's dog for its performances in
monthly tests with specific notes on the health of the dog and its compatibility
with its handler. Finally, the Dog Master should draw his assessment of the
handler on the basis of the performances, health and compatibility of the dog
with its handler, at the end of each monthly work sheet. Every worksheet so
prepared every month for each handler must be thoroughly scrutinised by the
concerned senior Dog Master and sent to the Chief Dog Master with his
recommendations of rewards or punishments for individual handlers.

The handlers of the Karnataka police dog squad do not maintain any
important records or registers at present. Handlers being the most important
officials in the hierarchy of a dog squad, they must be given freedom in
handling their respective dogs with concomitant responsibilities. This naturally
entails maintenance of essential registers like daily expenditure registers,
medical sheet, call register etc. by each handler apart from a daily notebook.
 The daily expenditure register bears a page for each day wherein all types of
expenditures incurred on a dog, including food, medical treatment, medicine, kit
articles etc are entered with details by the handler in his own handwriting and
the total expenditure incurred on that day summed up at the end of the page.
The call register bears a page for each case attended by the handler and his
dog, with entries by the handler in his own handwriting. The call register
contains exhaustive information about each case including the date and time of
the call, the'time of the handler's departure to the scene; the time of his reaching,
the distance of the journey performed. Vehicle number, driver's name, nature of
the call, caller's name, crime number, name of the investigating officer, name of
the police station involved, a brief account Of the case, the specific acts done by
the dog at the scene, the outcome of the acts of the dog, the time of departure
from the scene, the time of reaching back etc.

The medical sheet for each dog is maintained by the concerned handler
wherein there are columns for entries of date, symptoms of illness, names of
medicines administered and signature of the veterinary surgeon treating the dog.
Pasting a piece of the container of the medicine in the column for the name of
the medicine as evidence for the medicine being purchased may be made
binding. For each vaccination administered, a certificate is obtained and pasted
in the concerned column. Though the medical sheet is maintained by the
handler, he should not make any entry in the sheet. All entries therein are made
by the veterinary surgeon who treats the dog. The Dog Master must
periodically examine this sheet and enter his remarks thereon.

The notebook of the handler is scrutinised periodically by the concerned

Dog Master and Senior Dog Master who record their remarks and instructions
thereon. The system of obtaining signatures of the officials on duty with time of
reporting etc on the duty register helps to have better control and supervision
over the staff. There is no streamlined system in the Karnataka police dog
squad to obtain feedback on the performance of dogs at the scene. The glitch
can be superated by prescribing a reminder form in duplicate which should be
sent to the concerned investigating officer at the end of the first month of a case
to provide full details of the investigation of the case as on that day including
arrests, recoveries etc with notes on the part played by the police dogs in the
investigation. Thereafter similar reminder forms are sent to the investigating
officer once in every two months until the case is disposed of. The reminder
form must have separate columns for entries about specific acts done by the
police dog at the scene and indications-given towards detection. This
safeguards the interests of the dog squad by checking the tendency of the
investigating officers to take undue credit for all detections even when
detection is actually done through police dogs. It should be made binding
through proper statutory provisions on all investigating officers to return all reminder
forms, duly filled up in time.
 The Karnataka police dog squad faces the peculiar problem of investigating
officers or other sources who call the services of police dogs as a learnt
response, leaving the dog and its handler who reach the scene to their own fate
without required briefing. This renders the performance of police dogs
ineffectual. This unhealthy operational defect may be overcome by prescribing
an 'Investigating Officers and Handlers Form' with columns for entries
regarding crime number, call number, brief notes about the case, specific
performance of the dog at the scene and results and signature of the
investigating officer. The Investigating Officer should sign the form in
triplicate, after completion of the operation by the police dog, and maintain a
copy for his station reference and hand over two copies to the handler. The
handler in turn must maintain a copy for himself and send the other copy to the
crime branch through proper channel.

The maintenance of history sheets for dogs is not properly streamlined in the
Karnataka police. Often, separate registers are maintained for the entries that
must be collated in a history sheet. An integrated history sheet in a specified
form with a minimum of the following 16 chapters must be maintained for each
dog.

a) History of the dog including name of the breed, colour, sex, date of
birth, name, registration number, height, identification marks, names of
the former owners if any, a photograph of the dog etc.

b) Family history of the dog including parents' breeds and names etc.

c) History of the heat periods of the dog wherein actual dates of the
beginning and ending of each heat period is entered in serial order.

d) Delivery information in the case of female dogs wherein information

regarding the dale of mating, name and registration number of the male
dog mated, name of the unit or owner of the male dog, expected
delivery date, actual delivery date, numbers of pups delivered and their
sex, names of the pups and method of disposal of each pup in separate
columns.

e) History of the weight of the dog entered with dates every week.

f) Bathing history of the dog with dates entered every fortnight.

g) Stool examination history with separate columns for the date of

examination, nature of worms noticed in the stool if any, action taken
against the worms etc.

h) History of periodical vaccination administered to the dog with columns

for the nature of the vaccination, date of last vaccination and next due
 date.

i) History of annual injections administered like distemper injection and

tetanus toxide injection with dates and a sample of the container of the
injection pasted to the sheet.

j) Record of monthly temperature of the dog with dates.

k) Particulars of fatal accidents involving the dog.

l) History of the basic training of the dog including its qualification for
police work like tracking, guarding, aquatic lifesaving, night
patrolling, crime detection, detection of explosives, detection of
narcotics etc.

m) History of refresher courses attended by the dog including name of the

course, period and dates, place of training, instructor's name, name of
the training officers, name of the handler etc in separate columns.

n) History of the participation and performance in dog shows, police duty

meets and other competitions with dates and names of the places where
the shows are held.

o) History of medical treatment of the dog with entries pertaining to dates

of illness, facts of medical investigation, medicines prescribed, dates of
medicines administered and remarks of the Dog Master in separate
columns.

p) There should be a separate chapter at the end of the history sheet

wherein the chief Dog Master and head of the crime branch enter their
remarks on the dog periodically.

Presently, police dogs in Karnataka are fed twice a day at 0930 hours and
1730 hours. The feeding may be increased to thrice a day at 0930 hours, 1330
hours and 1730 hours with the food for the day being divided among these
periods. The increase in the frequency of feeding helps to improve the health,
efficiency and strength of the dogs.

The dog squad of Karnataka police must at least now take the first step
towards strengthening the unit as a useful outfit to support the increasingly
difficile job of policing. The main actors in the dog squad, namely the dogs, are
far better and more non-controversial instruments in the police machinery than
two other more important factors namely machinery which is blind, dumb and
deaf and men who are too intelligent to be always loyal and obedient. Dogs
know no corruption and no dishonesty. They bring life to policing unlike
 machinery. Policing is safe in the charge of these loyal, obedient and efficient
animals. It is left to police leaders, how much they decide to take advantage of
these ever-obedient animals in the difficile task of policing, who are cheaper
than men and machinery and warmer and more efficient as well. Future
policing needs call for a closer and increased synergy between policemen and
these animals in tackling the gauntlets of the increasingly complex job that
policing is growing to be.

NINE

THE WORLD IN THE 21ST CENTURY

We may be wondering what arsenals are in store for the 21st century after the
momentous and suspenseful events along the passage of the 20th century that
mangled the quiet facade of the Earth. Life as a stream of endless processes,
catenated by the cardinal rule of cause and effect, may open up a vista for us to infer
what the world will be in the 21st century.

Taking clues from the loose ends of the 20th century and realising that every-
thing moves in circle and ipso facto every practice and every idea has its own ups
and downs in circular motion along the course of time, helps to deduce the possible
structure of the 21st century on and around certain fixed pillar posts vacated by the
20th century in its haste to give way to the 21st century. I am certain that you will
find my analyses and inferences interesting.

As the dusk of the 20th century gives way to the dawn of the 21st century, new
alignments may emerge to replace senescent superpowers that ruled the roost in
international politics. The trend in world politics would be the coalescence of
regional powers to harness maximum financial strength. The politics of ideological
conflicts of the 20th century may give way to the politics of pragmatic dispensation.
National affiliations may lose their fervour and each regional alliance of nations
may develop into a loose, federal government as the century draws to its end. A
more liberal and universal outlook with the progressive intermingling of cultures
would be the hallmark of the 21st century. The world probably may awake to a
world-culture with all divergent nuances of the current world being absorbed into
a mainstream culture in the new century.

The 21st century shall be known by future generations for the growth and
universal acceptance of an open market economy and a combative economic spirit.
The last decade of the 21st century may find the laissez-aller in economy touching
its ultima thule and concomitantly its breaking point except for a few scattered
 pockets still clinging to a controlled economy as remnants of yore, which will work
as a springboard in subsequent centuries to move the world back to a modified
guided economy.

Another significant development of the new era would be the upsurge of

economics in the new order of things to mark the century as "The Economic Age'.
The present national and ideological divide would be replaced with a new economic
divide, leading to a regrouping of regions by economic convenience. The concept
of the European Economic Community of the 20th century will lead to similar
economic groupings in East Europe including united Germany, Central Asia,
South-East Asia, South Asia, West Asia, South America, North Africa, South and
Central Africa and finally North America to create distinct economic zones along
the passage of the 21st century with more and more power and authority transferred
to these new units to control and govern the social life of the people. National
identities would be relegated to oblivion as a thing of the past by the end of the 21st
century with the world divided into a handful of distinct and well-defined economic
units, each of which will strive towards the telos of economic prosperity and
increased self-sufficiency. However, increased concours between the new
economic units could bring tension back to the world in the later part of the century,
leading to the failure of this new concept of living on this Earth and return to good
old nationhood in later centuries.

United Germany, as the leader of a regional power, consisting mostly of the

present Warsaw Pact countries may provide a real challenge to the financial strength
of Japan and its neighbouring allies in the first half of the 21 st century and grow to
be a financial giant of the world in the second half of the century by pushing the
latter to second place. A close run for supremacy as a financial power of the world
between regional powers led by United Germany and Japan would be the main
political drama of the new era. Both USA and Russia would be decimated to minor
parts in the battle-royale.

The 21st century may see impressive breakthroughs in unconventional energy

sources like nuclear energy, solar energy and oceanic energy which may cheaply
meet the major share of the world's energy needs by the end of the 21st century.
This may reduce the importance of oil-rich countries in world politics and add to
the relative peace of the coming century.

The new century may see nuclear energy becoming the staple energy source for
motor transport and aviation. There would be major breakthroughs in harnessing
and using solar energy. All anxieties about depletion of energy sources would be
laid to rest in the 21st century. The new era may find people going for artificial nutritious
foods produced from cheap edible plastic chemicals. This would lessen
the dependence on agricultural produce and provide a permanent solution to the
problem of hunger. Major breakthroughs in recycling of waste may provide the
solution to shortages and ecological contamination. The 21st century is unlikely to
make any tangible headway in space and interplanetary research due to the factors
involving time and distance and the changing circumstances that may localise issues
to the world we live in and ipso facto control the passion to explore outer space.

The real scientific leap of the 21st century would be the discovery of normal
temperature superconductors and their universal applications in the fields of
mobility, communication and energy that could revolutionise life on this Earth by
obliterating the notion of distance from its face. Man may travel at speeds very close
to that of light by the end of the century. He would then be able to control things
anywhere on this Earth by sitting in his place and monitoring audio-visual feed-
backs. Some advancements by the end of the century in the ability to penetrate to
the past cannot be ruled out either.

A positive outcome of the new concept of living in regional economic groupings

would be the increased realisation of the futility of wars and military expenditure.
The new age may spawn hope for sempiternal peace and prosperity, with the
aggressive side of the human psyche being increasingly engaged by the ceaseless
demands of the free market economy. The 21st century may witness a spurt in the
general standard of living, brought about by the deployment of resources hitherto
utilised only for military research and expenditure.

The greatest blessing of the 21st century would be the conspicuous reduction
in international strife and concomitant military expenditure while the worst feature
would be the reduction of man and his environment to an average profile deprived
of all interests and curiosities. He and his environment may become more fragile
inside and outside as unending technological advancements increasingly take over
the fields of his exclusive skills and competence and ipso facto condemn them to
wither away by desuetude. The 21st century may be the beginning of this withering
process of human skills in a telling way. Life would be less interesting - though
more convenient - in the 21st century which could cause more and more people to
turn to religion and occult practice for solace and adventure.

Computers may become integral to all human activity thus leading to decline
in human skill and intellectual ability as the century advances. The menaces of
terrorism and drug-addiction may further grow to be the major challenges of the
21 st century. The increasing complexity of day-to-day living traversed with poverty
and an unabated population explosion may encourage new, unheard-of forms of
crime. New complex diseases may surface on the Earth to attack the populace from
time to time and keep the medical research establishment continuously engaged to
meet the challenges. Life's concomitant stress may spawn agitated, nervous,
frustrated and directionless minds. Family units would be in disarray with the institution
of marriage in red and a new concept of an open society with guaranteed
institutional security coming into vogue.

The new century may witness more and more people turning to religion for inner
peace. As both Christianity and Islam fail to meet the growing spiritual needs of
the plebeians of the 21st century, the world may look for solace to Buddhism with
 ^ts spiritual interpretation of life. A new school of Buddhism called 'Scientific
Buddhism' may sweep the Earth of the 21st century to become its major religion.
The new age may also find proliferation of scientific research in parapsychology
and the universal application of its findings to control crime and improve labour
relations in industry and commercial enterprises.

The new century may see the concepts of family and marriage losing their
relevance to life. Each to his own ends would be the new dispensation and state
security to newboms, the old and infirm would become a basic responsibility of the
state machinery. With the increased demand on limited land, due to the progressive
rise in the population, the 21st century may find all lands becoming government
property, leased out to private parties on contract for a definite period for use:
though laissezfaire with private ownerships in other enterprises would be the
tendency in the 21st century economy. Public undertakings may become a rarity in
the new age. Even selected jobs in the governance of the country would be permitted
to be managed by private firms on contract. Such sensitive areas as development
activities, recruitment, crime investigation, collection of taxes etc. would be hand-
led by specialised private firms on a time-bound contract as the century draws to
an end. The turn of the 21st century may see only the legislature and judiciary
remaining the government's direct responsibility with executive jobs being handled
on its behalf by private agencies.

The new century may witness an upsurge of romanticism in literature and life'
fuelled by a new ferocity that spurns any constraint on natural conduct; free sex
may well become the rule. This new popular movement would spread across the
world in the new century, adding spice to growingly insipid lifestyles. New
philosophies and religions may spring out of it to alter intellectual and spiritual
perceptions.

While the new world will have advanced amenities at its beck and call, simple
natural needs like adequate space, clean water and fresh air will become rarities.
Piped water supply would be a matter of the past and clean water would be sold in
bottles in markets. The new age may also see special fresh-air sessions everyday
for half-an-hour: a luxury of breathing fresh air, produced by special treatments in
a costly process affordable only to the rich. The selling of small fresh-air packets
for use in private may become a lucrative business throughout the world and
multi-national corporations may make huge investments in both fresh-air packet
and clean water bottle industries.

Life would be a more complex and costly affair in the 21st century inspite of man's
increasing success in bringing the world to his heels through inventions and
discoveries. Birth-control on demand would be a normal practice. Speed and
detached impatience would become the spirit and trend of the age, with passions,
emotions, moods, tastes, arts and pleasures becoming rare luxuries, known to a few
isolated deviates. Living would be reduced to a cutthroat competition with the
conflict between man and his poisoned environment compounded with that be-
tween him and his fellow-men turning extra modum in his fight and flight for
survival. The simple innocent side of his nature would become a further casualty
in the process with increased manifestations of criminal tendency at all levels in all
fields. Life would thus become less secure and more risky in the new dispensation.

The world would be less worth for living in the 21st century inspite of its
technical and material advancements. Though the threat of war would recede in the
new age, life's acceleration to the highly competitive tempo, necessary to ensure
survival, may render living a sick and uneasy affair. As man bends nature to his
convenience, nature's failures to meet his basic needs may balloon up to gigantic
proportions by the increased tax on her fragile attributions. Yet, it should be
remembered that the 21st century is just a minute phase in the huge evolution
process which takes the world to higher levels of existence through restless and
difficile passage.

We should know that this world is a great self-sustaining system, built to survive
all ecological, nuclear or population disasters. The life system of this Earth is a
wonderful self-regulating work-house with a skill for survival. We must rest assured
that the Earth will certainly survive all contingencies of the 21st century by its
wonderful self-regulating and self-sustaining mechanism that was at work in the
20th century coram nobis.