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Opinion
What Statistics Wont Tell
- All That is Wrong with India's Police
by Maja Daruwala and Navaz Kotwal
It looks like
India's policing is in pretty good shape. The annual report of the
National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) 2006 is just out. It lists just 29
human rights violations for the year. Looks like it is time to shut down
the human rights commission. Its work is done.
So all the rumors we hear about interrogation through beatings and
torture, rapes in custody, illegal detentions, extra-judicial killings -
1,400 in one year in Andhra Pradesh alone - must be just lies. Thank
heavens there is nothing to worry about. If there were even a little bit
of truth in these awful and persistent allegations one might feel a wee
bit unsafe around the police or even suggest that the police need
reform.
Within days of the NCRB report, the Asian Centre for Human Rights
released its report on torture in India. The figures for custodial
deaths were abysmal. Almost 7,500 deaths in custody in the last five
years that translates to an average of 1,500 deaths every year.
Twenty nine says one; 1,500, says the other. One of these reports has to
be lying.
Night after night pictures of police beating retreating crowds to pulp,
pounding a man tied to a post with a strap, dragging some poor petty
thief through the town tied to his motor cycle, assisting the crowd in
shaving a woman's head for being a witch, kidnapping small children
across state lines because they could not find the kids' father - all
these can't be human rights violations and must all be propaganda.
Nothing wrong here at all.
But there is. Even given its dicey data collection methods, the national
crime report lists over 62,000 complaints against the police in one year
alone. And this in a country famous for non-registration. That's a two
percent increase from 2005.
Like the iceberg 9/10th of what is beneath the surface is never going to
be seen. Inquiries were instituted in a minuscule 25 percent cases. Less
than five percent went to trial and 0.03 percent - 24 policemen to be
exact - were convicted.
Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh lead the pack with three complaints
for every 10 policemen. This could mean many things: that the police in
these states are more accountable; or it's easier to register cases
against them; they are genuinely worse than in other states; or simply
that these states collect their statistics better.
On the other hand, Uttar Pradesh where the chief minister has publicly
accepted that her police is corrupt comes in with 23 complaints against
100 policemen. However, the figures at the National Human Rights
Commission (NHRC) have a different story to tell.
In 2006, there was a total of 28,377 complaints of police atrocities
received by the NHRC. Of these almost 70 percent of complaints were
there against the Uttar Pradesh police. In Delhi, one in every 10
policemen has a complaint registered against him. Sure that means that
nine are good guys. But is this trend in policing in the capital of 'one
of the fastest growing economies in the world' something one can be
overjoyed about?
The deaths in custody are not considered human rights violations. This
must be so because of the 103 reported custodial deaths, 24 were due to
suicide, seven because the people tried to flee custody, 18 during
hospitalization and 29 died natural deaths. Fortunately, custodial rapes
have almost disappeared from the crime reports. Just two rapes reported
in the entire country in a whole year. The third one reported was
declared false due to a mistake of fact or law. Maybe the mistake was on
the part of the victim who tried to report it.
Statistics normally speak volumes. But when statistics are so contrary
to what we see on television and what we read in the newspapers and what
we hear of and come across almost every day indicates that there is
something terribly wrong and reform is badly needed.
Over the years, numerous recommendations have been suggested to reform
the police. Recommendations by top cops, by consecutive police
commissions, by eminent jurist Soli Sorabjee, by none other than our
prime minister and finally even by the Supreme Court.
However, all states have uniformly disregarded these recommendations
time and time again. With so much unwillingness to take steps to improve
policing, the next year's crime bureau statistics are unlikely to be
much better.
Its cold figure laden columns will probably not be able to take account
of the likes of Sarita. Married with two children. Twenty-five years
old. Sarita went to the police station to get her husband freed for some
petty crime. The police there teased and taunted and asked for a bribe.
Of course, she couldn't pay. But she was handy, poor and helpless, so
they raped her. Terrified and traumatized but with nothing to lose, she
got up the courage to complain. Of course, it took a month to get that
done. Of course, nothing was done to further the case after that. Of
course, she ran from pillar to post. Finally, hopeless and humiliated
she made her final statement before the ADG - she killed herself in his
office.
What a relief! For her. For the police. For the system. What's to
investigate? What's to document? The prosecutrix is dead. The evidence
has gone cold. Someone is absconding. Someone may get caught. It is all
off the front page. Next woman please.
No, the crime records for next year will not acknowledge Sarita even
though her heartbreak represents all that is wrong with the police. She
isn't a human rights violation, is she? She's hardly a registered case.
She may not even get into the inquires completed column or into the
conviction rates. Her absence from official memory even as a lowly
statistic will obliterate even the small acknowledgement of tragedy
which poor and cruel policing brought upon her head and brought to those
thousands of others and that the police already hide so well.
(Maja Daruwala is director of the
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Nawaz Kotwal a coordinator in
the same organisation. They can be reached at navaz.uno@gmail.com)
June 29, 2008
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