Bengaluru: It's time to check our cops!

BENGALURU: The recent case of a techie, hailing from Kerala, being beaten and forcibly taken to police station after he tried to shoot a video of cops collecting hafta, is yet another instance of police high-handedness towards citizens trying to expose their wrongdoings.

Deccan Chronicle spoke to senior officers and social activists about this rising intolerance among the men in khaki.

While on one hand, the citizens are being encouraged to be vigilant with concepts such as ‘friendly policing’, the ground reality seems to be not so encouraging.

The more worrying fact is when the victim approaches with a complaint of police high-handedness, he is ignored. On the contrary in some cases the victims have been booked for manhandling, by the erring cops.  

Aam Aadmi Party National Executive Member Prithvi Reddy, who himself witnessed one of such police atrocity himself, told Deccan Chronicle, “When the members of AAP were protesting against the resignation of Lokayukta Y Bhaskar Rao, we were pushed and beaten up by one of the sub-inspectors on duty. We went to complaint against him, but the members were charged with manhandling him, as he had filed a counter complaint against us.”

He further said, “Last week I came across a similar incident where two cops on Cheetah were collecting hafta from a woman fruit vendor on Bull Temple Road opposite Ram Krishna Ashram. They took their ‘hafta’ from the vendor and I was standing there sporting my AAP cap".

"I told them ‘You  people have no shame’ to which one of the constable, who was riding the bike, told me that he was just collecting the change for the money he had given to vendor. Unfortunately, the vendor was so scared that she too claimed she was returning the change.”

He blames this malaise to the basic structural problem of the Police Act. “Our Police Act dates back to 1861. The British wrote the law to control Indians, who were rising against them. So it was written for the rulers to control the people. Unfortunately, the law has not been changed".

"There were some amendments, but the basic structure of the law has not changed. So, the mentality of the police has also not changed. Today the police work on behalf of the rulers to control the people, so they don’t seem to understand that they are answerable to the people,” Reddy pointed out.