In Delhi stir, a blast from past
NEW DELHI: “We need you”read a placard with a photo of former top cop Kiran Bedi at the protest by police personnel outside the Delhi Police headquarters on Tuesday. The demand has its roots in an episode, during Bedi’s tenure as DCP (north) in 1988, which was similar to one that triggered Tuesday’s agitation.
Until thirty-one years ago, the Delhi police and lawyers at the Tis Hazari courts worked together --- literally under the same roof. On the second floor of the court complex, among the offices of the public prosecutor and chambers of the advocates, there was the office of the deputy commissioner of police (north district) Kiran Bedi.
On January 15, 1988, a man was arrested from a woman’s washroom at St. Stephen’s College. SBS Tyagi, who was one of the officers then serving under Bedi, said, “The man was held for theft. He did not tell anyone that he was a lawyer. The following day, when our officers were producing him in the court in handcuffs, the other lawyers started protesting. The magistrate discharged him.” Another officer, who did not wish to be named, said while the episode launched a clash between the lawyers and the police, the event that triggered the faceoff took place a week later when lawyers demanded to meet Bedi at her office. “On January 21, we were in a meeting for the Republic Day preparations. A group of lawyers said they wanted to meet madam. She asked them to wait. They got angry and started breaking flower pots. This led to a clash, forcing the cops to lathi charge. There were more clashes in the following weeks.”
On February 17, a group of about 3,000 people stormed the premises and attacked the advocates and damaged their vehicles. The lawyers blamed Bedi for both incidents — for ordering baton charge and engineering attack by outsiders. Later, the government set up a probe which concluded that the lawyer’s arrest was “justified” but termed his hand-cuffing “illegal”. It also described the police action as “indiscriminate”. Bedi, who is Puducherry’s lieutenant governor said, “.... I refused to budge to the demand of the lawyers seeking suspension/ arrest of the cops responsible for hand cuffing the advocate,” adding that the person(arrested for theft) did not identify himself as an advocate at the time of his arrest. In the present incident, the “Delhi Police should take a stand and be firm on it ”, she said.
In September 1998, the Vasant Kunj Police arrested a lawyer who was allegedly trying to resolve the alleged takeover of an educational institution. Cops allegedly stonewalled requests to produce the arrested lawyer the next day. Some lawyers allegedly beat up the policemen when the lawyer was being produced before the Patiala House court.
Lawyers across trial courts struck work in solidarity with the arrested lawyer. “The matter was settled through talks,” senior lawyer Karan Singh, the former secretary of the Patalia House Court Bar Association, who was involved in the efforts to defuse the situation, said.
Two years later in June 2000, another clash was reported when lawyers were stopped from marching to Parliament.