# 36 When Cops Turn Rogue

Credit: Gordon Johnson, from Pixabay

When Cops Turn Rogue

After a weekend in Delhi, the boys were on their way to the bus stand, to head back to their college in Pilani. They asked the auto driver to stop in Pahar Ganj, where one of them went to see if he could ‘score’ some charas. Their peddler wasn’t at his usual spot, so Manu turned back towards the auto. His waiting friend was already in sight when two policemen strode up to him and demanded that he hand over his charas. 

“But I don’t have any!” Manu protested.

The policeman strolled up to the auto, dropped a small stick of hashish into his friend’s lap, and proclaimed, 

“But your friend does.”

The boys gaped at each other.

“How much money do you have?” one cop asked.

The boys emptied their pockets, and came up with about 900 rupees. The policeman stretched his palm out. Even as they handed the cash over, one of the boys offered,

“Sir, but we have to get to college.”

“How much is your bus-fare?”

“Thirty rupees each.”

The policemen counted out sixty rupees and handed it to them, dismissed the auto-driver, who turned tail and scooted, leaving the boys to walk several kilometres to their bus.

This was in the 1980s. 

Last week, in another Indian metropolis, a friend’s son was walking to college when two men in plain clothes stopped him and asked to see his phone. When Ashish demurred, they flashed their ID cards at him, and insisted he unlock it. They scrolled through his messages and contacts and bombarded him with questions about his friends, the places in which they roomed, their comings and goings. 

“Call Nikhil and tell him to come and meet you here”, Ashish was instructed.

When Nikhil arrived, they were both ushered to the nearest police station, taken around to the back, into a tin shack. They were told to remove their shoes and belts, and body-searched for drugs. When that yielded nothing, Nikhil’s phone became the subject of the police search - more scrolling through contact lists, more inquiries about friends, and the meaning of messages. During the course of the day, five or six young men, all from the same college, were brought into the shack, and held, without warrants, without any process. 

Late in the evening, the cops - assuming they were indeed in the employment of the state - asked the boys to take them to the home of one friend whose name had come up on several phones. They were bundled into a car; when they pulled up at the address, the cops asked with whom their friend shared the apartment. 

“Sir, there were 4 boys sharing, but his mother came last month, so we don’t know who all are there now.”

“Oh, his mother, hunh?” The cops looked at each other, and drove away.

Next stop, a testing lab, late at night. The boys were asked to produce urine samples, and fill their personal details onto forms. The cops didn’t need to wait for the results; by the time they had returned to the tin shack, the demands had begun. The cops began with 1 lakh. 

“Sir, none of us have more than five or six hundred in our bank accounts”

“Your parents can transfer money in two minutes”, a cop pointed to their phones.

By first light, the amount was settled, at thirty thousand. Ashish was handed his phone, and asked to call home. As the cop had predicted, his mother confirmed the transfer in minutes. Ashish was allowed to go to the nearest ATM. Before breakfast, the boys were set free.

No charges, no arrest, no money trail, no uniform, no name badges.

Banditry, committed by those who are charged with protecting us. Police station premises, vehicles, government labs, all funded by our taxes, turned into instruments of racketeering and extortion. I doubt there is any police force in the world which does not house some criminal elements, and my story from the 1980s avers that police extortion is hardly new to India.

Yet, the last few years have seen an essential change in the nature of our law enforcement agencies. Whereas they have always been instruments of power, wielded by those in political control, today the power is wielded with a naked impunity. A girl reports she has been gang-raped in Hathras; when the police denial is questioned, and in danger of being exposed, they destroy the evidence by cremating her in the dead of night, while locking her family into their home. Shahrukh Khan’s son is held on drug charges without a shred of evidence. Congress Party leaders are man-handled and held for wanting to demonstrate against inflation. 

The message to these functionaries is clear - the exercise of your power is not constrained by the law. The political imperative is clear, to demonise and terrorise the opponents of those in power. But when the norms of process are repeatedly ignored, the culture of impunity will settle deeper and deeper into our agencies. If their power can be unleashed by the need to settle political scores, then why not to settle personal scores? And if the man with the most votes can call the shots, why not the man with the most bucks?

Political leaders, especially of a poor and growing country like ours, have a million tasks to perform, a thousand priorities to juggle, hundreds of compromises to achieve. Like all leaders, they need effective administrative systems to carry out the tasks they set for their teams. Under-resourced, under-trained, and under-financed, our administrative machinery is hard-pressed to govern this nation, even with the best intent in the world. But when that intent is wilfully corrupted by vindictiveness and the pursuit of short-term political gain, the rule of law is in danger of fraying into narrow channels of autocracy, each man in uniform looking after his master, but also looking out for himself.