Having tackled the underworld in Mumbai and Khalistani terror in Punjab, you’d think retired IPS officer Julio Ribeiro would have seen it all. Yet, the Vikas Dubey ‘encounter’ killing in Uttar Pradesh and the custodial deaths of a father and son in Tamil Nadu so shook the 91-year-old “supercop” that he wrote an open letter to his IPS colleagues, calling India a “police state”. In this interview, he speaks about police reform and accountability and the role politicians play.
With the custodial deaths in Tamil Nadu and the Vikas Dubey “encounter” in U.P., it seems like all the talk about police reforms has been of no use.
Nothing’s worked because our politicians don’t care. They want to misuse the police for their political ends, and our police officers are equally guilty because they are willing to go along with them for the favours they can get.
The power of making appointments and transfers has to be limited. When I joined, the government could only transfer IPS officers; everyone below that was handled by the Superintendent of Police or the Commissioner. Also, back then, the politicians had taken part in the freedom struggle. They took their job of looking after the interests of the people very seriously. If the police crossed a line, they’d take up cudgels for the victims.
When I became Mumbai’s Police Commissioner in 1982, I told my men that if they wanted a transfer, they could come to me and I would consider it on merit. I didn’t want politicians telling me to transfer anyone. Only once, the then Chief Minister Vasantdada Patil asked me to promote someone out of turn. I told him that once I gave in, my men would know that I too was capable of succumbing. The CM then went to the DGP. I told the DGP that it was best the CM transferred me, I’d go quietly. The matter ended there.
When I was leaving Mumbai to take over as Director-General of the CRPF, 12 inspectors came to see me off at the airport. They told me: ‘Because of you, our haftas [protection money] stopped, but we regained our self-respect.’ I realised that if they were bothered about self-respect, why can’t we take the trouble to set an example? The man on top must be firm.
What about accountability of the police?
A Police Complaints Authority has been set up in Maharashtra, with a retired judge, a retired IPS officer and a member of the public. Interns at my NGO (Public Concern for Governance Trust) reported that in the three months they attended its hearings, the judge never showed up, the police officer rode roughshod over the complainants, and the member of the public never spoke a word. The report the authority was supposed to give the Assembly was never given. This was the committee set up to make the police accountable!
In your recent open letter to IPS officers, you have asked if they want India to become a police state. Do you feel it has become one?
It will soon become one if, like Yogi Adityanath, the other Chief Ministers also order the police to shoot criminals. How come Vikas Dubey was left alone for so long? You leave the biggest ganglord out even as you shoot more than a hundred criminals. Crime didn’t come down and you gave power to the police, which they are bound to misuse.
Why are they “bound to misuse” power?
You are a human being, you look for every opportunity to exercise the power you have. What did that father and son in Tamil Nadu do? What was their crime? Why did the magistrate give them into police remand? There was no recovery of property to be made from them. They just challenged the authority of the police who asked them to close their shop. Do you kill people for that?
What makes policemen so brutal?
Now, police constables need better qualifications; they should have completed Class X at least, if not Class XII. Earlier, they needed to be just Class VI pass. The power they get, of arresting, of stopping anyone — it’s too much. It’s beyond their comprehension. They come from the same socio-economic groups as the people they arrest every day. They routinely slap them, thrash them. They want to show they are the new bosses. Police must use their power justly. And the government must condition their power. But governments use them, and the people support the misuse of power. For the public, police reform means more power to the police.
I was informed of the first ‘encounter’ that took place when I was Mumbai Commissioner after it had happened. When I reached the police station, I found a crowd there, all very happy. I told the policemen it’s not our job to kill a criminal. You can’t be police, prosecutor, judge and executioner. Everyone was surprised. The inspector said: ‘But you told us you don’t want any goondas in our area; the only goonda must be the police inspector.’ The next day, people from the area came to my office. He was a very bad man, they said, about the criminal who’d been killed. The middle class supports short-cuts because the judicial system has gone off the rails. Why are adjournments allowed even in murder trials?
Is there something missing in police training?
It’s all covered in the training. My NGO conducts training for policemen. While attending the course, they even admit to the wrongs they have committed. But once they get back on the field, they are absorbed into the system. In my experience, if they have a good leader, their training falls in line. Even during riots, a good leader will make sure the police understand that favouring any one community won’t be tolerated. If they know that their officer is their boss and not someone sitting in the Mantralaya, then these things won’t happen.
Do you think the courts can intervene?
The Supreme Court understood the problem and, in 2006, in the Prakash Singh case, it laid down the procedure to appoint officers, giving them a two-year tenure so that they don’t have to keep looking over their shoulder. But the politicians either circumvented these directives or appointed pliable persons to the Security Commissions.
The only solution is for the people to say, we will not allow the police to behave like puppets of the ruling parties. Till their votes are endangered, politicians won’t give a damn.
The writer is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist.
Published - August 08, 2020 04:01 pm IST
