The Communist Party of India (Marxist)‘s [CPI(M)] alleged bid to bend the police to its political will by posting compliant and inefficient officers, many of them with a criminal track record, in key law and order posts emerged as a rancorous sore point between the ruling front and the Opposition in the Assembly on Monday.
The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) walked out of the House after Speaker A.N. Shamseer rejected the Opposition’s motion for an adjournment debate on the ‘politicisation and criminalisation’ of the Kerala Police under seven years of the Left Democratic LDF rule.
Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan said acquiescence to CPI(M) satraps influenced police postings. District Police Chiefs (DPC) and Station House Officers (SHO) answered to CPI(M) district and area secretaries, respectively. The party publicly hounded those few officers who broke the norm. Officers who enjoyed CPI(M) patronage tended to ignore their superiors.
Citing cases
The criminalisation of the police was the causality of CPI(M) cell rule in police stations. Law enforcement had no empathy for people in distress. In Wayanad, an officer molested a child sex abuse victim. In Thiruvananthapuram, the police told off a woman who reported sexual assault by a stalker. In Kannur, the police refused to arrest a youth who assaulted a vagrant.
Congress legislator Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, who moved the adjournment motion, flagged the “police protection” accorded to persons who harassed a college girl in public in Kottayam.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan termed the UDF’s motion a damp squib. The Opposition’s desperation to demonise the police showed a severe scarcity of topics to assail the government. He said that since 2016, the police had booked 826 law enforcers for breaking the law. The “bad apples” in the police department constituted merely a fraction of (1.56%) of the 55,000-strong force.
The Opposition has done the police a disservice by tarnishing the department. They have forgotten the yeoman service rendered by the police during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2018 floods. The State police have evolved as a modern, humane, mature and professional force under the LDF rule.
