Prevention of crime is better than encounters and bulldozer justice

Ages ago, as a crime reporter I had many an opportunity to chat with several criminals, some hardened. But that was very informal and I was strictly told by the “friendly” police officers not to quote the conversations as the ones which were conducted inside the particular police station. Of course, I used the journalistic liberty of using that information in my own way, quoting “informed sources” (yes for the informal communication!). There were also occasions when I was called in as an interpreter for the police when they had criminals of Andhra or Telangana origin. My generation of journalists never pounced on the arrested people or did ambush interviews as you see today. But, we thrived on the leaked stories by police (and even corporates) even after formal press conferences by the police. As a political reporter, one had to rely on leaked leads from politicians and by corporate executives as a business journalist.

But today, I am shocked at the way Yogesh Kumar alias Raju, a member of Lawrence Bishnoi gang, addresses, on camera, a group of media persons at Mathura police station and gets away saying all kinds of things. Shocking because this happened in a country where the Prime Minister (read present) does not address press conferences. Though three policemen have been suspended because of the Mathura incident, the case itself raises many questions about the way crime is being handled by the authorities and governments and a spate of encounters.

To begin with, this Raju, accused in the murder of a Delhi gym owner, was arrested after an encounter, and he was hit by the police bullet in his leg. Then we hear about two persons arrested in connection with violence in Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh on October 13 which is unacceptable right the way the Durga procession was conducted through a Muslim area to the attack on a mosque and the shooting of a youth who removed the Islamic flag from the mosque to hoist an orange flag.

In fact, the Bahraich incident is a case study material on how not to handle issues involving religious sentiments.

There is a convention of forming Mohalla peace committees that was started during the terrible riots in Bhiwandi. That was basically to restore peace, post-facto. This system was later used as a preventive measure as well during the various festivals and occasions such as Muharram. I have been a witness to every new senior police officer – from the Commissioner to the station in-charge senior police inspector - holding meetings with the civic society, including representatives of religions. In fact, way back in the nineties, a senior police inspector at Vashi in Navi Mumbai (my Karm Bhoomi), Jaysingh Patil, ran a campaign titled: Every policeman is a citizen in uniform and every citizen is a police man not in uniform. The campaign was an instant hit and Patil was successful in forming COP (citizens on patrol) to help police check burglaries.

Obviously, the system of Mohalla Committees does not exist in Uttar Pradesh. Else, the police and the district collector (being the district magistrate) could have conducted pre-event peace committee meetings and made communities, yes Hindu and Muslim, to understand the sentiments of one another and impressed upon them to control their followers. The Durga procession at Bahraich was allowed not only to pass through the Muslim area but halt and perform dance to the tune of loud music amid choicest abuses in the name of mothers (which I cannot reproduce here). Ma Durga is worshipped as the mother goddess and during her festival we get to hear abuses targeting mothers. Visuals of the incident clearly showed the presence of a police van in the event (which was no longer a procession) with people violently dancing in front of the mosque. But the security was either outnumbered or deliberately did not act to stop obscene DJ music, a youth climbing the mosque and pulling down the green flag and so on and so forth. The incident went viral on social media and the graphic details of what all happened were publicised. The young man who hoisted the ‘bhagwa’ on the mosque was later identified as Ram Gopal Mishra, 26, after he was shot dead. He was recently married, and his life could have been saved, but for this religious fanaticism. The Godi media, irresponsible as they are, added fuel to fire by putting out false descriptions of the way Mishra was killed to deny which the Bahraich police had to post a social media post. The police should have gone beyond this and booked the journalists who spread the fake news. Anyway, one does not expect that to happen to the Godi media.

Two of the accused in the murder of young Mishra were shot in what is dubbed as a “half encounter” as they tried to escape, police claimed. The Congress and Samajwadi party naturally questioned the "encounter justice". The authorities also served demolition notices on the shops, majority of which are owned by Muslims, around the Bahraich mosque. It could be coincidental, but why did the authorities wake up to the illegality of these shops only after the communal violence? No one will answer this question, obviously. In fact, the UP police enjoys the record of about 13,000 encounters done over the past seven years in which more than 200 alleged gangsters were killed and 17 policemen lost their lives.

While the encounter stories involving criminals waiting court hearings could be a debatable issue, the extreme action after communal riots could always be prevented – that is the riots themselves were averted.

This is where political reforms, along with the police reforms, are needed. For any sane society, it is hard to believe that the so-called law makers play on religious sentiments, fan them and then reap rich political harvest. In the bargain, it is the youth such as Ram Gopal Mishra who get misled and carried away.

It is absolutely disheartening to see the youth getting blinded by this religious fanaticism while the lawmakers send their children to schools and colleges abroad. The example of Gorakhpur MP Ravi Kishan, 55, telling young students that the time has come now to take to arms, along with education (Shastra ke Saath, Shastra bhi), is enough to shock any right-thinking person. He went to the extent of making a horrendous allegation that meat was mixed in Tirupati laddus, just after AP CM Chandra Babu Naidu alleged that animal fat was mixed in the making of Tirupati laddus during the tenure of his predecessor and arch rival Jagan Mohan Reddy. Award winning journalist and well-known YouTuber Abhisar Sharma has put out a list of leaders who sent out their children for foreign studies while the same politicians mislead the youth in India and spread venom against certain communities. Is it not essential for the Mohalla peace committee model to be adopted from Panchayat to Parliament and rein in the loose cannons? But the question is who will take the lead when the top leadership itself indulges in the Meat-Mangalsutra-buffalo narrative and misleads the people? Who will say enough is enough!

(The columnist is a Mumbai-based author and independent media veteran, running websites and a YouTube channel known for his thought-provoking messaging.)