[nukkad] `I feel vindicated by the people` By K P S Gill

[Gireesh Dixit - PCS <>]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.
-Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------



`I feel vindicated by the people`
 
 
By K P S Gill 

When one talks of human rights vis-a-vis the police administration, there
are two situations. 

One is the ordinary situation of maintaining law and order, where the major
allegations about the police have been those of torture, deaths in police
custody etc. In some places there is also talk of fake encounters with
criminals. 

When you are dealing with a normal situation, there is no question of
tolerating violations of human rights. No leeway should be given to the
police administration. 

The other is the extra-ordinary situation prevailing out of terrorism, which
the police is called upon to counter. 

In the second situation, the judgement has to be qualified by the police's
role in a situation where not only have they to face the terrorists' bullets
but also face the nexus between some of the terrorist orgnaisations and the
so-called human rights groups. 

Terrorism does not recognise the normal conventions of politics and
democracy, and cannot be countered by these. It is a completely immoral and
unconstrained use of force and can only be countered by the use of force. 

During my tenure in Punjab, I found that some of the NGOs or even media
organisations were actually front offices for terrorist groups. In some
instances, I have found within a half an hour of an encounter, these NGOs
would come out with their own version of the encounter. 

Unquestionably, there was a nexus between some of the terrorist outfits
parading as NGOs and human rights group. It took us some time to decipher
this nexus. 

In certain areas of our country, newspapers themselves are fronts for
dubious outfits. 

This makes the task of the police extremely complicated. 

The terrorist groups have long since shifted their strategy of just relying
in use of force. 

They now create over-ground fronts and political organisations to spearhead
their immediate campaigns. 

Their strategy is to build up substantial public opinion through a variety
of human rights fora and sustained litigation against the most visible
symbols of the state. 

Some of the human rights organisations are great experts in manipulating the
media. 

They are very clever to use the existing laws to pillory the police. 

There is a human rights industry in India that comprises unscrupulous
elements who abuse the processes of the law, bear false witness, and
fabricate evidence. 

After the police officers and men of the Punjab police gave their lives to
bring the Punjab situation to normal, and after there was widespread
rejection of the people of the terrorism in Punjab, the human groups came
out with what I call the `litigation weapon.` 

The law went over backwards to implicate the officers who fought terrorism
through the worst period that Punjab experienced, with the flimsiest of
evidence. 

Unfortunately, some very unfortunate statements were made by judges in the
Supreme Court. And, some of it was done with an eye on publicity. 

The very people who fought terrorism, by a perverse twist of the law of the
land were out to be the villains of the nation. 

And, some of the people, important functionaries, who supported terrorism
with all their means, are today enjoying the patronage of the state. 

In Punjab, after the situation was normalised, there were many individuals
and organisations who used the allegations of police excesses as a plank for
polls, as an election strategy. 

However, today, they stand utterly exposed. In the ensuing elections and in
the last two Parliamentary and Assembly elections, every single one of them
who stood for elections on a human rights platform have lost their deposits.


Had their allegations even a grain of truth about rampant violation of human
rights by the Punjab police, the common man of Punjab would have voted en
masse to empower these individuals to right the alleged wrongs. 

I feel vindicated by the people. 

I have, as I have said, to join issues with the way the judiciary has
treated the police. 

It has been shabby and most of the time at the instigation of the Human
Right groups. 

In Jammu and Kashmir, which is an area severely disturbed by terrorism, in
nearly 14 years of strife there have been just 13 convictions in cases
related to terrorism. 

This is when more than 30,750 people have been killed in the conflict
between 1988 and 2001, 11,377 of them civilians. 

The problem with the Human Rights groups is that they do not care, or simply
do not understand the roots of the society. 

They are urbanised and elitist, they simply have no idea of the realities in
the villages. 

In Punjab, when the Human Rights groups used to come to me complaining of
police excesses, I used to invite them to come with us into the villages and
tell them `we will show you what is happening.` 

But not one of them came. I made a standing invitation that any human right
group was free to accompany our forces for any operation and they can be the
judges of what is happening on the ground. 

In a normal situation the key to making the police more sensitive to civil
rights and human rights is to make the police stations absolutely
professional in their functioning. 

This would involve, training, re-training of the personnel, give them the
infrastructure for them to do their work, the motivation to be true to the
public weal etc. 

This is easier said than done. 

But the most important aspect of the improvement of the police force is to
ensure that the police is totally taken out of the grasp of political
manipulations and throw the frequent transfers of policemen out of the
window. 

In my opinion, this one step will ensure that the police force is more
sensitive to human rights and civil liberties; when a man knows that he is
going to be in a place for a three-year tenure he has a stake in the
society. 

He cannot, as it were, shoot and scoot. He has to face the consequences of
his action. 

This will ensure that he will be more sensitive to the society's emotions.
Living among those people will itself be a pressure on him militating
against wrong action on his part. 

(K P S Gill is best known for restoring the militancy torn Punjab back to
normalcy as the DGP of the Punjab police. His exploits in Punjab have earned
him the sobriquet of the `super cop.) 

As told to E Jayakrishnan


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To join/leave, use the form at: http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/#options
This list is archived at: http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/archive.html