Because we are different.

Half-hearted move for police reforms

7 July 2010

 Maja Daruwala and Parantap Das

“One touch of the tiger opens up ten wounds and one touch of the policeman opens up eighteen" runs an old Bangla proverb. The old words have modern credence in the light of nearly a thousand complaints reported against police personnel in West Bengal in 2008, the tremendous outrage generated among the public over the police role in the mysterious death of Rizwanur Rehman and atrocities allegedly perpetrated by policemen in Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh. Time and again, the police fail the people of West Bengal. Yet the government and the police establishment stoutly resist any effort to reform.
Finally, pursuant to directives of no less an institution than the Supreme Court, the West Bengal government is hesitantly testing out its reform agenda. Most recently, it has decided to set up a police complaints authority. Its declared purpose is to ensure a bias-free inquiry into allegations against IPS and WBPS officers. While the admission that there is actually a problem is a step forward, the remedy remains half-hearted and absolutely out of line with the Supreme Court’s directive on what a police complaints authority should look like.
A police complaints authority is meant to be a specialized agency that watches over how police handle complaints against themselves. Across the world, effective agencies are manned by diversely skilled people with integrity who are completely independent of the police and politics. The most effective ones have the power to summon people and documents, ask for explanations about mishandling and make binding recommendations. Police chiefs are expected to comply with what they say. Disagreements or refusals to follow their advice have to be justified in writing and the whole put into periodic public reports about police performance and shortcomings that are then discussed in the legislature. None of this can be expected from the deformed and mutilated agency that has been set up.
The Supreme Court required complaints bodies to be set up at state and district levels so they could be close to the people. West Bengal has set up just one for the whole state of over 80 million people. The court required commissioners to be full-time and to have their own investigating staff. Instead in West Bengal, the chairperson of the state human rights commission will now double up as that of the new body. This when the commission hasn’t had a full-time chairperson for the past 16 months and has 5,000 cases pending and more coming in. The government says it wants to monitor developments in other states before taking further steps. Given that it has had five long years for cogitation, such procrastination speaks more of government disinclination than of prudence.
The membership is even more problematic. It is dominated by former and serving bureaucrats. Unlike anywhere else in the world, the new institution - if one can call it that - will have on it serving police officers. This is in sharp contrast to the court’s directive which required experts and professionals from diverse fields of experience to sit on it. Now, the composition will ensure its image is immediately stamped as pro-establishment and pro-police and will, therefore, defeat the purpose of its creation. The chair’s dual role will also create a situation where the chair pulling up police personnel all morning as the head of the human rights commission will suddenly be transported to being their brethren on the bench in the afternoon. The conflict of interest is so obvious as to be laughable were it not so sad for the public.
The court also laid down a mandate for the authority. It required the state-level authority to look into allegations of "serious misconduct" which included death, grievous hurt and rape in custody. In addition, the district-level authorities were empowered to look into allegations of extortion, land or house grabbing and abuse of authority. Allegations of extortion, land or house grabbing and abuse of authority do not fall within the mandate of the authority.
In relation to their mandate, the court laid down that the recommendations of the complaints authorities at both the state and district levels "for any action, departmental or criminal, against a delinquent police officer shall be binding on the concerned authority". Unfortunately orders of the West Bengal authority shall be "ordinarily binding on the state’’. It leaves the discretion with the government to disobey by merely giving reasons. Such a clause will guarantee that the authority remains impotent for all purposes.
If the government is seeking through these shoddy cosmetic means to deceive the public into thinking that they are creating an effective public institution that will improve police accountability and assure bias-free investigations into their many wrongdoings, then the public had better wake up and stand up for their rights. Or they will get what they deserve—nothing.

The writers are Director and Programme Officer, respectively, of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative