Praveen Kumar Policing The Police Justice
Praveen Kumar Policing The Police Justice
Praveen Kumar Policing The Police Justice
Justice begotten at a cost is justice lost. The fact is lost sight of by the present
administration of justice. Justice is a natural right. It is the sine qua non and raison
oxygen to a living being. Free and fair justice is the leges legum of human rights. The
proficiency of justice administration has to be assayed with this litmus test and the role of
the police in the system has to be judged by its contributions to this goal of the justice
administration system.
Justice in its basic sense necessitates an integral vision. Justice abstracted from its
environment, past, present, future, diverse issues, dramatis personae and related events
cannot be justice in the true sense of the word. Justice in parts is no justice that lasts.
Justice involves delving deep down to the heart of an issue and delivering justice in
reference to all related issues and matters to the rightful entitlement of all. This
presupposes a passion for objectivity and justness and above all, selflessness in the
arbitrators of justice as well as in those who are in the service of the administration of
justice. The role of the police in the administration of justice comes to scrutiny in the
context of their non a such part in the investigation of crimes and maintenance of law and
order.
Police play umpteen roles as grassroot executors. They are basically performers,
actual doers in the field. Passion in the normal trait of action. Objectivity and justness
seldom give company to those who act to show results. Expecting selfless traits in a
profession like police is waiting for rain drops from white clouds. They do perform
duties with normal flair and loyalty while put in service of justice. The tragedy is that the
loyalty of the police prefers the interests of the rich and powerful to the abstract idea of
heightened cause. Loyalty to a value or a just cause is always a great virtue. The same
independence in it. It is a mortgage of the self. Loyalty denotes polarisation of the self;
devotion to one, and thoughtless opposition to whoever stands up to the object of the
devotion. This notion renders loyalty devoid of any sense of justice, which bounces from
justice. The Achilles’ heel lies in loyalty basically being a faith, a blind faith. Sans
subverting per se the very foundation of the cardinal principle of equality among
administration of justice.
their shoulders. As the task-masters of the statecraft, they are invested with diverse rights
and privileges. They have a peek to all private as well as public activities of the citizenry.
They can constrain people to perform specific tasks and forbid from doing others in the
national and public interests. They prevent, check, prohibit, restrain, regulate, confine or
arrest erring people depending on time to time needs dictated by the circumstances. They
can forcibly break open, enter, search and seize when need arises. They use weapons to
hurt and kill. The wide spectrum of powers impinging on the basic rights of the plebeian
places the police on a pedestal different from that of the common man as far as the
police in serving the interests of justice. The police, as the means of justice, are often
exempted from the process of justice by the law itself. Human nature being what it is,
the need of keeping the police in tight leash regarding exercise of their sensitive powers
has become conditio sine qua non for the administration of justice.
The relevance of the police in administration of justice is two fold; one, fair
exercise of their responsibilities in the interests of justice; two, fair exercise of their
powers to ensure that no harm is done to the process of justice. As dispensers of justice
during investigation of crimes and maintenance of law, police perform highly sensitive
tasks capable of undermining the very process of the justice administration, Police enjoy
unrestricted freedom unbecoming to the sensitivity of their job. Practically, there are no
means to force them to comply with the needs of objectivity and fairplay in work save
their own interpretations of laws and actions. Postliminary intereferences of courts are
too little, too late to be meaningful. By the time an issue knocks at the doors of courts,
damage to the process of justice could have been irrevocably done. Whatever courts to
thereafter help only partial recovery from the damage. Innocent people would already
have been arrested, chargesheeted and harassed; decent people would have been
dishonestly denied rightful dues in the name of maintenance of law; criminals would
have been willingly let off the noose; or hors la loi would have been let free to do things
in violation of the extant laws as quid pro quo. What police do in the name of dispensing
justice are material to the hoi polli, not what courts deliver, if deliver at all, at some
distant future. The fact brings the police centre-stage in the administration of justice.
Police unequipped for the crucial role is the crux of the issue. Lack of sound mechanism
job culture etc inhibit police from performing at levels adequate for the importance of
them from high human values. Weak economic position and easy opportunities for
dishonest riches render them prone to corrupt practices. There is nothing tangible in
their service to inspire commitment to noble causes. Their job culture does not inspire
them to delve deep into diverse nuances of their job. Their service lacks in facilities to
en face policing crying for deep, intellectual analyses of its relevance for establishment
of a just society and national well-being. Shallow policing is responsible for all the
mishaps and turbulence of the first half century of independent India. The period saw
police distracted to go berserk seeking parochial and selfish ends. A force committed to
parochial and selfish interests can hardly do any justice to the administration of justice.
special powers without committing wrongs against justice. Police are dangerous fences
with their extraordinary powers potential to uproot and destroy the crops they are put in
protect innocent people from rash exercise of powers. This is an infinitely more difficile
responsibility considering what human nature is and how every man suffers from a blind
spot about himself. Every person is right for himself. Every criminal is just in his own
assessment. Every act, every human being, does has its own logic, reasons and
justifications. Nobody ever is wrong to himself. This is true of the police too. Every
encounter, every lockup death, every third degree method, every wrongful confinement,
every illegal arrest, every excess committed by police has its own police justifications.
outsiders. You seld find police confessing to a wrong or an excess committed. We have
We have any number of cases of senior police officers colluding with subordinates in
destroying evidences of lock-up death cases. Punjab police revelled in hushing up cases
of cold-blooded murders through false encounters. Police excesses are justified by the
top-brass per procurationem of the solidarity of the police force as though the concept is
inimical to the interests of justice. Use of third degree methods is excused as the bedrock
ambience, with the police going berserk with their special powers to establish a just
society, is not conducive to the administration of justice. The police are committing
wrongs against justice by the very means invested to them to protect the interests of the
The cause of failure of the police lies more in the systems failure the character of
its dramatise personae, deviant job culture and wrong leadership than in the concept of
police. Police in inappropriate milieu may turn into a Frankenstein. It is like a herd of
tamed elephants in a khedda operation. Lack of direction, weak management and poor
organisation turn the tamed rogues on rampage against the organisational goals instead
of bringing of knees the ferae naturae. Remedial measures have to be found for the
Policing being a specialised job with rare keeks inside by outsiders about
measures and decisions taken in disparate circumstances, few outsiders comprehend that
the job gives tremendous leeway for work and decisions, be it crime investigation or
maintenance of law. This is a dangerous liberty in the system of dispensing justices that
warrant preciseness and smug exactitude in the sensitive business of balancing justice.
The sensitivity is briller par son absence in the present police and policing system.
Justice being what it is in the present age of prolate concours making threatening
differences , the leeway in policing process gives scope for favours, misuses and
corruption. Lack of real supervision and control over the work ab extra is another face of
the problem. Beginning from deciding whether a prima facie case is made out in a
at what stage, on whom, with what all evidences, every decision is exclusive police
decisions. How an investigation proceeds, at what speed, whom to arrest and whom not,
at what stage, whom to release on bail and whom not to, what to search and seize, where,
at what juncture of time, the direction of the investigation to be pursued and what turns to
be taken at what phase, police decide on own without reference, supervision, guidance or
control from outside. Though laws provide for courts to keep track of the process of
investigation, it is rarely the case in the field. The situation is blatantly glidder in the
field of maintenance of law sans the mechanism of courts keeping track of the issues
unless the matter is filed, before a court of law. The Achilles’ heel is taken advantage of
by the rich and the powerful. Police have become willing tools in their hands in warping
justice in barter of the crumbs they throw from the res gestae of their unjust deeds. The
situation is conspicuous in police bending laws in favour of the people in power to let
them out of the noose of laws or crush their enemies or keep Sophocles’ sword hanging
began during the emergency of 1975, saw a rising swing in 1980s and found in excelsis in
the early 1990s with courts taking cognisance of the situation and convinced about the
need of their intereference in the interests of the administration of justice. Public interest
litigations became popular. Higher courts ventured into close scrutiny of investigations
into cases against people in power. It became public that there was no history of
political compulsions. The premier investigation agency and its chief were subjected to
strictures in open courts for nonperformance, partisan approach and contempt of court in
investigations to cases against people in power. Close scrutiny of the investigations led
to arrest, chargesheet and conviction of powerful political leaders. The tragedy of the
awakening is that the so called judicial activism saw itself serving the interests of the
political witch-hunt preceded it. This considerably reduced the impact of the elert courts
government that followed. The use of the CBI and revenue enforcement agencies to
bring political rivals to submissions led to the fall of government in April 1997.
The state terrorism against political rivals became a perfect art in 1970s with the
use of intelligence agencies for surveillance and opening secret, files, and in 1990s with
the use of investigation agencies for manoeuvring investigations into criminal cases, with
the willing cooperation of police leaders in the respective agencies. While the trend
strengthened the position of the chief executive of the government, it sine dubio,
weakened the political fabric of the country, so essential for a democratic process. In
process of the country. Jain-Hawala case caught the popular attention as nothing before.
The case took down its author and his party with his political rivals to the drains. The
coalition government that followed used the same ropes to strike a wedge among the
leaders of the party that supported it from outside by terrorising some through the CBI
and revenue enforcement agencies and luring others with the crumbs of power. Bofors
kickback case got a lease of life. St.Kitts forgery case and Lakhubhai Pathak cheating
case were re-enacted and manoeuvred to net-in strategic political rivals on filmsy
evidences.Rs.133 crore Urea scam and JMM bribery cases loomed large. A key leader
was interrogated without sound grounds for possessing wealth disproportionate to known
sources of income and later implicated in Tanwar murder case on suspicion. The party
was subjected to various enquries by revenue enforcement agencies. The acts nailed the
fate of the coalition government to prove that misuse of police often goes counter
Ms.Jayalalitha, found a series of criminal cases stacked against her and her associates,
Recent past saw executive heads of government opting for their own men in the
police force to head the premier investigation agency of the country and political rivals
while cases of national significance on sound footing were dragged on for decades
wantonly. Often, ambiguous entries in diaries to prove bribery and old photographs
proceed against inconvenient political leaders. It was a scene of every successor hurling
criminal cases against his predecessor. Police reduced to a tool of political revenge in
this powergame. In the process, the police lost its credibility as a nonpartisan player and
an invincible tool of establishing justice. It is a pity that the lee-way police enjoy in
policing contributed to its loss of face and spine by its patent sequacious comportment
aplenty in policing. It be raids on vice dens, issue of licences, or action on rowdy gangs,
decisions of police about whom, when and how, play important role in political
gameplan. The decisions and concomitant actions more often than not, are taken on
administering justice to all. Power assumed higher importance to police than justice.
Vice dens, criminals and rowdy gangs, bien chausse with political patronage or money
power, are not only allowed to run trouble-free, but often protected to the hilt by the
police. This is how the police in the job of serving justice are stabbing it en arriere.
Police patronage to hors la loi is ephhemeral and changes colours with the
change of guard in the government. Personal ambitions of some in the organisation lead
and subservience to rich and influential segments of the society. In the maelstrom,
justice suffers, and the nation, its constitution and the general public to whom the police
Police is not the odd-job boy of the government. It is not the hand-maid of
tests available to achieve these ends. Once police miss the bus of justice and the rule of
law, their goals of safety, security and well-being remain a distant dream. They lose the
credibility and respect of the public, so essential for effective and perficient policing.
The fear the police inspire can not take it far in absence of credibility, respect and
sympathy of the public. Once the police lose their usefulness in political and power
gameplans consequent to losing public credibility, their political patrons will discard
them like used condoms. The best bet for the police is to be professional and committed
to their responsibilities towards the administration of justice. Police would forget this
need only at their own peril. Doing anything violative of its raison d’etre like
sabotaging the course of justice will prove to be fatal to the relevance of the police for
the society.
The relevance of the police lies in its usefulness to the administration of justice au
reste safety and security. Police are the arms of the administration of justice. They are
the drive and thrust of the administration of justice. Paralysed arms crumble the body of
the administration of justice. Arms struck by struck by gangrene, poison the whole
investigations is one. Bartering justice is another. Subjecting justice to the terms of quid
pro quo is one more. Inefficient and shallow policing add to the list. Delivering partial
justice adds to the problem. Refusing to act against injustice is another kind of injustice to
justice. Making justice a costly affair gives another dimension to the issue. Effectiveness
of police lies in its ability in making justice an easily and cheaply dispensable
commodity. Police are the first line of the means of dispensing justice. Courts come to
the scene only in far later stage for restricted number of cases. For the hoi polloi, police
is the first and the only easy defence against injustices. Most cases of disputes never
cross the thresholds of the police stations. Police do act as arbitrators of justice in
preventive measures and security duties. They enjoy a key position in the administration
than courts and prosecution department together do. That is why a sound police system is
conditio sine qua non for the health and progress of the country and its tenuous social
fabric.