The zero-sum game of fake encounters

The killing of gangster Vikas Dubey, a product of the police-politician-criminal nexus, in an encounter, within hours of receiving his custody by the escorting UP STF, stands in sharp contrast to the well-appreciated Peelian principle. According to this principle of modern-day policing, the degree of cooperation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force. And public cooperation is what the beleaguered image of the UP police needs the most. Normally, the cracks in the upfront posture of the UP police, while balancing the politicisation and criminalisation in its rank and file, would not be so deeply visible as have appeared in the aftermath of a Frankenstein ambush on the night of July 2-3 at Bikru village in Kanpur.

To an outsider, it might look remarkable how the police-politician-criminal nexus was effortlessly balanced in the jurisdiction of Dubey’s native police station, Chaubeypur, even though the prevailing equation cannot be called an exception in UP. The police station incharge (Station Officer or SO), who should have owed his posting to the will of the district SSP, remained loyal to Dubey. He is said to have alerted Dubey about the raiding party under his senior, the Circle Officer (CO). The CO, who supervised the functioning of the police station, had in that capacity repeatedly briefed the SSP about the SO-Dubey nexus and also sent him a written report in this regard in March. The officer was ambushed while leading the raiding party at Dubey’s village. The SSP, who had all along somehow ignored to effectively intervene in this serious hierarchical disorder, would become, after the ill-planned raid, super busy in stamping police authority in the area, and plotting an inevitable neutralisation of Dubey and his henchmen. There were, in addition, two higher police offices in Kanpur, of the IG Range and ADG Zone. Both had remained indifferent to the nexus in spite of Dubey’s notoriety.

To be fair to the UP police leadership, let us be clear about the long-set positioning of the police in the nexus. The routine of policing in India is not limited to the police-public-criminal interface. An additionally pronounced factor completes the interface — the politician.

That is what the morale-shattering events at the remote Kanpur village in UP, culminating into the gunning down of eight policemen by a politicised mafia, have so rudely demonstrated. Not that any reminder was needed; this balance in nexus policing is so well settled in society. The same sections that showered support to Dubey were later amenable to his neutralisation. When a bulldozer, in broad daylight, demolished the fugitive’s citadel at the behest of the seething police, it was also not only a show of political muscle, but also an act of regrouping of public indignation. Dubey, a product of feudal criminality and Panchayati Raj politics, had disturbed the balance of the nexus and had to pay the price.

Every morning, the police control room in Lucknow sends a summary of the previous day’s police encounters to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as a follow-up to a self-acclaimed quest for dominating and eliminating criminals. It has had little impact on the status of the crime situation in the state. Amidst the setback to the people’s trust in the law and order machinery, and no introspection on the agenda of the three-year-old government, their priority continues to be to teach all vocal adversaries, including human rights and pro-democracy activists, a crippling lesson through highly questionable criminal proceedings, aiming long incarceration and imposition of huge compensatory recoveries. That the stage-managed encounters are counter-productive to legitimate policing is not going to dawn on them in a hurry, the shocking loss of eight police lives in Kanpur notwithstanding.

The UP police should find itself a different image than allowing its stakes to be repeatedly tested at such dubious crossroads. Badri Prasad Singh, a battle-hardy former IG of UP police, who has post retirement, settled down at his native village in Jaunpur, reflected in the context of the Kanpur episode: “I was SSP, Meerut, in 2003-04. I had made it clear in the very first crime meeting to refrain from fake encounters. During the DGP’s arrival at the Circuit House, the local business delegation complained that the notorious criminals are not being killed in police encounters. I immediately countered that so long as I was the SSP in Meerut, no stage-managed encounter will take place. The DGP left the hall in anger to an adjoining room. The DIG, IG and I followed him. We had a long discussion there. At last, the DIG wholeheartedly supported me. He praised my work, saying that those districts under his range where encounters were taking place are witnessing poor crime control and inefficient policing and, hence, I be encouraged to function in accordance with law. At this point, the IG also fully supported the DIG.”

In contrast to the Dubey episode is the policing spectrum of the Covid battle, wherein a notion has gained ground that positive pandemic policing served as a redeeming platform for the police image. The effort could not look more heroic as more than 13,000 policemen have tested corona-positive and over 125 lost their lives in the line of duty. As they gained experience, a big number of police leaders have voluntarily come forward with innovative schemes of facilitative and philanthropic policing to ease the lockdown hardships and stresses, earning the gratitude of the community.

But this is an instinctive response, display of a cherished humanistic trait — a person in position helping out fellow beings in dire need. Suppose it is turned into a trained response in order to make the police exposure to the wide range of pandemic emotions, from the handling of sick and dead and mitigating of hunger and job losses to cheering up the newborn and comforting the quarantined population, into an organisational trait!

Policing by instinct cannot eclipse policing by training. An instinctive response, howsoever laudable it might be, is no match for a trained response in a huge organisational set-up. The trick would be to work backwards and instill these positive instincts into the training protocol by devising and incorporating appropriate modules. The colonial police were created to serve the designs of the political masters. There should be no justification in today’s India for the criminal nexus between the police and the politician to go on endlessly.