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FIFTH
COLUMN
Rape
of the Law
The Veerappan
episode reinforces the need to overhaul the law and order machinery
By
Tavleen
Singh
Veerappan
has released his famous hostage and melted back into the jungles whence
he came, and since public memory is short we will quickly forget the ugliness
of the Indian state that this shameful episode brought so painfully into
focus. Just as we will forget what the Supreme Court said about the behaviour
of the chief ministers of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. "It does not
appear," said Justice Y.K. Sabharwal, "that anybody considered
that if democratically elected governments give an impression to the country
of being lawbreakers, would it not breed contempt for the law? Would it
not invite citizens to become a law unto themselves? It may lead to anarchy."
 The
judges live in the relatively genteel environs of Delhi, so they are perhaps
unaware that anarchy is the name of the game in states like Bihar and
Uttar Pradesh, and that the average Indian already has contempt for the
law because of the Indian state's upside-down approach to it. Bandits
and terrorists invariably go free but ordinary Indians can find themselves
in jail for no crime at all.
So, for
instance, on the very day that Tamil politicians were holding press conferences
to demand that Veerappan be allowed to go free since his arrest would
"spoil the atmosphere", the Delhi police made a late-night arrest.
It was of a man I know well as a law-abiding citizen with no police record.
His only "offence" was that he went to a wedding party and had
a few drinks. He was arrested outside his own home not because he was
being a public nuisance but because the policemen who accosted him tried
to steal his money. He is not a rich man and earns a meagre living working
as a chauffeur, so he tried to resist having the Rs 1,600 on him from
being stolen. When he did he was beaten up and thrown into jail for the
night. He never got his money back and might have stayed in jail had his
employer not come to his rescue.
Such needless
harassment of ordinary citizens constitutes routine police work in India.
In villages, things are so much worse that ordinary people—especially
women—keep as far away from the police as possible. Their contempt
for the law comes also from their knowledge of collusion between the police
and the most notorious criminals in their area. It has become worse over
the years because many of these criminals now move easily into politics.
Just as—if you read the writing on the wall—Veerappan will probably
do one day. He is already making political statements and portraying himself
as a Tamil nationalist rather than a murderer. And though the police have
spent 10 years apparently unable to find him, Tamil politicians seem to
find him quite easily. How long will it be before he enters Parliament?
Puzzling
Procastrination: In this atmosphere of contempt for the law and growing
anarchy, it becomes even more puzzling that the home minister has not
yet begun to address the issue of police reform. Not only do police recruitment
and training procedures need to change radically, but methods used by
organisations like the Central Bureau of Investigation also have to change.
This is especially important now that the CBI has become adept at using
the media as a lynch mob. Look only at the manner in which its report
on match-fixing was leaked to the press. It is possible the cricketers
the CBI report points its finger at are guilty but surely this should
be proved in a court of law. Instead, the agency tells us that it may
not, on the evidence it has gathered from bookies, have a legal case.
At the same time it leaks its report to newspapers and television channels
so that our former cricketing heroes are tried and condemned in the media.
Even if, as has happened with Kapil Dev, they are eventually found to
be innocent of the charges they have been accused of, it will be too late
because their reputations and lives will already have been destroyed.
Is this just? And why is it that the CBI always manages to hit only soft
targets instead of the people who have looted public money through illegal
commissions?
Meanwhile,
Veerappan remains free to pillage, loot, murder and kidnap and, had it
not been for the Supreme Court, may also have succeeded in collecting
a huge ransom from the governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and in
securing the release from jail of more than 50 of his comrades. It is
a shaming episode and brings back ugly memories of how the Government
of India was brought similarly to its knees in Kandahar when faced with
another bunch of terrorists. Had the Home Ministry learnt anything from
that episode it would have at least begun the process of overhauling our
law and order machinery that is more suited to some colonial power than
a country that prides itself on its democracy. The fact that it remains
pretty much unchanged since the British Raj created it speaks for itself.
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