Despite the Supreme Court’s 14-year-old directions aimed at kickstarting the process of implementing police reforms, no State is still fully compliant
There is a parable which is popular in the corridors of establishments where police officers and other security personnel are trained. The parable is of an old Bedouin who owned many horses, chickens, cattle and other farm animals. One night while the Bedouin was asleep, a chicken was stolen from his farm. The next morning, the Bedouin woke up to find the chicken missing and turned the whole farm upside down. He instructed his workers to look for the bird everywhere and asked fellow Bedouins to trace and catch the man who had stolen the chicken. Since the chicken was among the hundreds that the Bedouin reared on his farm, the workers were shocked by the fervour with which he pursued the chicken thief. After all, he owned many and this was hardly a loss. In light of the minimal loss, the search crew made little effort to discover the identity of the thief and gave up the hunt soon.
Understandably, with the lack of serious efforts to trace the chicken thief, they never did find him. Over the next few weeks, others who reared farm animals found that their cattle and horses were the target of repeated acts of theft. Perplexed, the younger Bedouins went to the senior Bedouin to seek counsel. The old Bedouin repeated what he had said numerous times before — “Find the chicken thief.”
The moral of the story is fairly simple. It is a cautionary tale about dealing with petty crimes with seriousness because even such crimes have a habit of devolving into major ones. The principle is translatable to most walks of life, too. With this context in mind, this week I want to discuss the Supreme Court’s recent directives that were issued while disposing a Special Leave Petition (SLP) raising issues regarding audio-video recording of statements and the installation of CCTV in police stations. In its directives and with the aim of preventing custodial torture, the Supreme Court, in an admirable move, ordered the installation of CCTV cameras in the offices of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Enforcement Directorate (ED), National Investigation Agency (NIA) and other similar agencies, in addition to police stations across the country.
As good as a move this is, the Supreme Court had passed a similar order in the past too and actually extended the ambit of an order passed by it in 2018, wherein it directed that at least the first phase of implementation of crime scene videography was required to be introduced by July 15, 2018, in at least some places. There was some flexibility allowed by the apex court when it said that this direction was subject to viability and priority as determined by the Central Oversight Body.
Based on my experience with the police and with the Central and State Governments, I am reasonably sure that to a large extent this flexibility granted by the Supreme Court in 2018 has been misused in so much that the directions of the highest court of the nation are not actually followed. While you may feel that such a statement is presumptuous, there is a rich body of evidence which would make this merely a logical inference. The most obvious example that forms the basis of this view is the case of police reforms and the manner in which State Governments have taken on board the Supreme Court’s directions to date.
In 2006, the Supreme Court — pursuant to a public interest litigation filed in 1996 by two distinguished former Director Generals of Police, Prakash Singh and NK Singh — passed directions and laid down seven directives based on the various recommendations made by the National Police Commissions since 1979. The directives are aimed at kickstarting the process of implementing police reforms that have been pending since the British era and include constituting a State Security Commission to ensure that the States do not exercise unwarranted influence or pressure on the police, providing a minimum tenure of two years for the DGPs, setting up a Police Establishment Board to decide transfers, postings (as opposed to the State Government) and a number of other crucial steps to actually modernise the Indian police force which is in desperate need to step out from under the thumb of its political masters and step into its rightful position as a modern police force.
However, despite these directions from the apex court, as per a report by the international non-profit Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, no Indian State is fully compliant with the 14-year-old decision. In fact, as per this report, only two Indian States — Andhra Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh — were partially compliant with the binding directives issued by the Supreme Court. This is especially tragic because India is in desperate need of police reforms. Firstly, because of the sheer miniscule size of the existing police force — as per IndiaSpend, India has 151 police personnel per 1,00,000 population which is much lower than the sanctioned 193 per 1,00,000 persons. Secondly, and more importantly, such reforms are the first step in modernising India’s police force and sensitising its police officers. According to the reports available, one in five police personnel is of the view that killing dangerous criminals is better than a legal trial. That is a staggering number for a country that is meant to be a democracy.
However, despite the appalling state of affairs and despite a directive from the highest court of the land, we have seen little to no movement from the side of the elected representatives. The lack of intent and inclination is easy to understand; by implementing these police reforms, the Governments will automatically be forced to yield their significant control over the police, which is an important tool for abuse in the hands of politicians. Therefore, unless the Supreme Court decides to take action against the Governments and bureaucrats who refuse to adhere to its orders, any step forward — including the latest decision of the Supreme Court — will merely be a pyrrhic victory for us to celebrate while the “chicken thief” is still at large.
(The author is a former IPS officer and member of the Congress party. The views expressed are personal.)
