MURDER IN UNIFORM
On September 28, Uttar Pradesh police chief O.P. Singh proclaimed that “sanskari” police personnel—vegetarians and teetotallers of good character—would be posted on duty at the Kumbh mela in Allahabad next January. The DGP’s pointless attempt to project his force as a ‘cultured’ unit became a talking point less than 12 hours later.
In Lucknow’s Gomti Nagar Extension area, not far from where Singh had spoken, police constable Prashant Chaudhari shot dead a 38-year-old sales executive working for US multinational Apple Inc. Returning past midnight (1:30 a.m.) from an event to launch the new iPhone in the city, Vivek Tiwari was on his way to drop a female colleague home when Chaudhari and another constable flagged them to stop. Fearing the worst, Tiwari tried backing his car away, which is when a reportedly infuriated Chaudhari stepped up and shot him through the windshield at point blank range. The single bullet shattered the victim’s jaw before lodging in his neck.
The ensuing furore, after local media networks highlighted the cold-blooded crime, forced the Yogi Adityanath government into damage-control mode. Both policemen were dismissed from service and arrested pending institution of murder charges. The chief minister also ordered a special investigation team (SIT) for the case.
But this isn’t the first instance of innocents becoming victims of UP’s lawless police force. In April, constable Mahendra Singh shot a
12-year-old boy at a wedding celebration in a village in Firozabad district. The cop reportedly was incensed when the child tripped over his foot while dancing. S.R. Darapuri, a retired inspector general, says policemen in UP have turned trigger-happy after CM Adityanath gave the force a free hand to go after criminal gangs. He says killings of many innocents have been passed off as ‘encounters’. Pointing to Tiwari’s murder, he adds, “...but for the media’s persistence, this too would have been dressed as an ‘encounter’.”
Like in February, when a team led by sub-inspector Vijay Darshan waylaid and shot dead the owner of a small gym in Noida’s Parthala village. Twenty-five-year-old Jitendra Yadav was ‘punished’ for arguing with the cops, who stopped him for playing loud music in his car. Initially reported as an ‘armed encounter’, the case was only handed to the crime branch after the villagers protested. A senior state police officer attributes the constabulary’s high-handed ways to a lack of training. According to him, 40,000 constables and SIs recruited in 2015-16 were deployed in the districts without any training worth the name. Officers concede that a large section of the lower ranks are no different from the criminals they are out to tackle.
Coincidentally, every one of the policemen accused of randomly opening fire is from the lot inducted in 2015-16. Which has now prompted a re-think in the state. DGP Singh has called for special training programmes for the unruly constabulary.
GIVEN A FREE HAND TO GO AFTER CRIMINAL GANGS, THE POLICE ARE NOW TRIGGER-HAPPY, SAYS A FORMER IG