The police do not have a right to make indiscriminate arrests and the Constitution of India denies them the power, said Faizan Mustafa, Vice-Chancellor, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.
He was delivering the 24th memorial lecture of late IPS officer K.S. Vyas at RBVRR Telangana State Police Academy on ‘Constitution, Human Rights and Policing’ on Monday.
“You do not have the power to take away anybody’s life without the due process of law and one must read the fundamental rights chapter,” he said to the trainee sub-inspectors and other senior police officers present in the auditorium. In fact, the central function of a Constitution is to deny power to the State and since the police are the most direct expression of the State authority, “it denies you the power”.
Quoting police commissioned report, Mr. Mustafa said that 60% of the arrests made by the police in India are either unnecessary or unjustified, due to which 40.3% resources of the prisons are wasted. “Therefore be judicious when you are curtailing the freedom of people,” he said.
Earlier, in an indirect reference to the ongoing protests against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Population Register (NPR) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC), Mr. Mustafa said that for the past one month, people across the country had embraced the Constitution and are reading the preamble. “I don’t know how many can understand it, but at least I see them reading. No other country anywhere in the world ever saw so many people reading the Constitution,” he stated. He maintained that it’s a bad time to talk to police officers, as he comes from a university. Students across various universities are unhappy about the excessive and disproportionate force that has been used in Delhi and by the Uttar Pradesh police in Aligarh recently.
He further stated that the nation is increasingly going in the direction of rule by law, instead of rule of law, which is a basic fundamental principle of our Republic. Mr. Mustafa warned the trainee SIs that they will be held liable for all illegal and unconstitutional acts which they do and said that he will sign a memorandum of understanding with the State police academy so that the trainees get a NALSAR diploma or a certificate or a degree for whatever training they want to appear.
Earlier, Director General of Police M Mahender Reddy said that K.S. Vyas inspired generations of police officers and youth in the society. He said that Vyas was a very renowned, committed, and genius police officer, who always thought out of the box for creating innovation and improvements in the existing system. “Today, if Andhra Pradesh and Telangana States are peaceful, it is because of the instruments created by Mr. Vyas, who has been in the forefront in fighting Naxalism and ensuring that the violence of Left wing extremist groups has come down,” he said.
According to Mr. Reddy, the Constitutional law and police work go hand in hand. “We are the agents of law. Whatever we think, do and aspire must be done in the provisions of law.”
