Intimidation Is Not Investigation

As a child, this blogger would spend summer breaks in rural UP. In this social cauldron where feudalism & bigotry battled modernity & tolerance, our world-view was given early shape.

These memories are scalded deep, as deep (for context) even as the horrible memory of 9/11.

Three policemen led a heavily chained prisoner into the village. An inevitable zoo of on-lookers (including this blogger) followed the cops & robber from house to house. Apparently, the prisoner was a bicycle thief and was leading the cops to the people he claimed he had sold the stolen bikes to. He'd go to a house, point out a bicycle, then there'd be protests from the owner of the bike, and then -- THE POLICE WOULD SMASH THE ROBBER'S SHINS WITH THEIR LATHIS (in our mind, we can still hear the awful crack of the lathi striking sparse flesh and sheer bone); the howling prisoner would then confess that he had just lied, and would lead the police to another house, where the same procedure would be repeated. For all we know, the guy was a poor innocent man who somehow found himself in police clutches, then confessed for fear of getting beat up, was being forced to locate bicycles he had never stolen, consequently (and ironically), was getting brutally roughed up for having made the fearful confession in the first place.

In December last year, we re-visited rural UP, where we witnessed essentially similar police tactics being plied on a poor, illiterate soul who knew very little about the ideals of law enforcement. For all the post-modern glitz of Bangalore, we still have rural UP where nothing ever changes.

We asked a friend, a police officer, if we could be arrested likewise, without reasonable cause, and beaten up for a confession. He laughed and cited IPC to inform us that, if arrested, we had the right to remain silent and had the right to an attorney. OK, we asked, then why was this right not extended to this poor fellow just beaten up? He shrugged and said, this is how things are done in UP.

Well, not just in UP, it seems, but all over India. Today, via BBC, we read about the court-ordered release of 8 Muslims accused of a bomb blast in Ghatkopar. Of the 19 arrested, not one has been convicted. Why? Because there's a lack of evidence.

Hello? Would we be wrong to see this as one more awful example of the police using intimidation as a cheap substitute for proper investigation? And while they're out there intimidating innocent people, the real terrorists are probably sipping tea somewhere and smiling. What kind of law enforcement is this?

A few weeks back, Dilip had written about a certain Iftikhar Gilani, the journalist son-in-law of the (contemptible) hardline Kashmiri separatist Syed Ali Gilani, who was hauled into prison for allegedly possessing classified information about Indian troop formations in Kashmir. Treated as a traitor, he was allegedly mistreated by the police & by fellow prisoners. Then, in a few months, all charges were dropped and he was released for lack of meaningful evidence.

Dilip used this story to make a liberal point about patriotism. We had a different take. To us, the fact that Mr. Iftikhar Gilani was investigated was entirely reasonable. His father-in-law is a leader of forces inimical to India, and his possession of military information, which while not illegal was surely suspicious, made him a reasonable object of scrutiny. Were India not investigating people like him, we'd have been very surprised.

BUT, investigation is not the same thing as intimidation. To charge a man with very serious crimes, allow him to be roughed up by pathetic criminals in prison, then let him go because the evidence is flimsy at best, is more intimidation than valid fact finding. Why is our police wasting time intimidating people instead of building solid cases that will hold up in court?

Surely, in 2005, there are means to investigate someone without using 19th century tactics typical of tyrannies.