Chandigarh, August 30
It is now official. Political interference, political alignments and money power are crippling the functioning of the Punjab Police. The Director-General of Police, Mr S.S. Virk, has shot off a highly confidential letter to all SSPs in the state, pulling them up for entertaining such interference in their day-to-day operations at the district level.

In the letter, a copy of which is with The Tribune, the DGP has virtually admonished his men on the disturbing reports of people being implicated in false cases and anti-social elements using political connections and extraneous reasons to escape the law. Almost like a candid confession, the DGP goes on to say that the Chief Minister, Capt Amarinder Singh, and the Chief Secretary, Mr K.R. Lakhanpal, had pointed out specific shortcomings in the Police Department at a meeting. Reports on the functioning of the police were based on information gathered at the ground level by the Chief Minister and the Chief Secretary. The SSPs have been asked to rectify the shortcomings immediately.

The major shortcomings pointed out by the DGP include serious issues that govern the lives of people in the state. He said not only the police was registering false cases, but also people were being arrested and prosecuted. “Cases are registered under political influence or money power in order to intimidate people on he basis of their political alignments”, said the unusually strongly worded two-page letter. The Tribune has a copy of it.

And if the average citizen of the state thought that the police was oppressive, this is the DGP’s opinion on the matter: “Cases against anti-social elements or guilty persons are not registered under some political or extraneous considerations and no effort is made to give justice to the aggrieved persons. Also proper attention was not being paid to people who come to police stations with genuine grievances”.

Though the DGP’s letter is seen as a clean up operation by senior police officers, sources in the police said it was political interference that was actually corrupting the police. Normally, DSPs or SHOs were appointed on the basis of their political alignments and they had their political “godfathers”.