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Indian Echoes
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GUJARAT: CRIME & THE CITY
Police needs protection
The move has created deep & widespread resentment
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 A vulnerable Gujarat Police has sought and been granted permission to post guards outside all state police stations. A Police Bhavan notice says armed guards will protect all security personnel and police establishments round the clock.
There were moves to station them sixth months back, but for some reason the proposal was then shelved.
The recently implemented order has raised question whether law enforcers should be given protection. The common refrain is what kind of cop is he who can’t protect himself?
Local newspapers are full of reports of murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery. And how bad the state of affairs is has been acknowledged by state home minister Amit Shah himself. Shah startled all in the Lower House when he read out the gruesome details: 191 cases of murder, rape, robbery and loot in Ahmedabad alone in the past two years.
It is shameful that Ahmedabad police have failed to nab a single culprit in 41 cases of murder, 11 of robbery and 735 of loot. Between June 2006 and May 2009 the city witnessed 267 cases of murder, 59 of robbery and 1,254 of loot.
Rape cases too have shot up steeply. The 2009 crime statistics show that at least one woman in the state is raped every day. This has made the case for guarding policemen all the more untenable.
While there is indeed a comic element in it, women activists do not find the police department’s move in the least funny. An activist who did not wish to be identified said the state’s cops were a lethargic and corrupt lot, and thus had no business to squander taxpayers’ money to pay for their own protection.
What the police should be doing, say crime watchers, is to institute the long needed reforms that have so far remained in office files. Like some other states, Gujarat too faces severe shortage of security personnel. These same guards could be used to bolster police manpower in the crime-hit areas.
But the police will have none of this. Argues RJ Sawani, commandant of the SRP group at the ONGC camp, Mehsana: “It is nothing new for the police department to have guards protecting their establishments. As a matter of fact it has all along been a tradition, and there is a provision for granting such a facility in the Police Manual. All security norms have a place for it. In Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Jharkhand police stations are easy targets for Maoists, and hence the need for security.” According to him people are as safe as their protectors are.
But this is what the officer says; among the people the move has created deep and widespread resentment. And this anger mounts as steadily as the crime graph climbs. This is one more problem that the cops in this violence-ridden state are having to cope with.
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Arnold Christie
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