Ram Revisited: Whither Accountability?

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THIRD EYE

Ram Revisited: Whither Accountability?

A few days
before police killed PC Ram on July 11, a prominent city-based journalist
told me that if Ram were alive they would kill him. I thought by ‘they’
he meant ULFA but strangely, his “they”
referred to the government. I asked him in disbelief why the government
should do that. He went on a long explanation and cited examples in
support of his view. Prima facie, he proved right as on July 11, Ram
fell to police bullets. It was a fact stranger than fiction and the
bizarre unfolding of this event in sordid sequence has made everybody
suspicious of everything, angry with everyone in the helm of affairs.

As an ex-policeman,
I tend to sympathize with the police because I know the pitfalls in
their nature of work. However, in this particular case I would rather
say that the police could have spared the life of Ram with a bit of
prudence and sense of responsibility. They had information on Ram,
as revealed by the Special Branch, and common sense should have alerted
them that he was likely to be there, when they surrounded the place
under the cover of darkness. It was an ordinary village thatch house
without any protection from gunfire. It also was clear that not many
militants could hole up in that small hut. Indeed, it was the opportunity
to rescue Ram without harm, without the trade-off between the jailed
militants and the hostage or ransom, and demonstrate their professional
capability and earn public plaudits; but sadly, they just wasted it.

They have
no convincing reason, having surrounded the area with sufficient force
to prevent escape, why they could not have waited until daybreak instead
of going gung-ho and spraying the hut with bullets. They were aware
that the persons inside were unprotected and, if not Ram, the inmates
of the house could have been held hostage there. Did they intend to
kill them all? It will not be wrong to believe that it was a one-sided
firing as none in the raiding party got even a scratch, which was
most unlikely if the militants fired dozens of bullets at them, which
they claimed. Whatever be the police point of view, Ram surely deserved
a more human approach from them and not killed crouching underneath
a cot in a pathetic attempt to protect himself from the raining bullets.
By all account, it was a botched-up operation lacking in strategy
for hostage rescue and sensitivity to human rights.

The investigation
of Ram’s kidnapping was a case of contradiction and credibility
gap with the police proceeding in his pursuit without any clue. They
said they knew where he was, but did not launch any rescue operation
for fear of harming him. The Chief Minister then put everybody at
ease saying that there would soon be good news indicating Ram’s
imminent release. After that, the police exhumed a putrefied corpse
and claimed it was Ram’s, which later turned out to be embarrassingly
wrong. Finally, the police pumped no fewer than nine bullets on him
as if in vengeance for the trouble he gave them while in captivity.
On the hindsight, we can say now that Ram should not have resurrected
but remained buried to live longer, for then the police would have
left him alone and he could have walked into freedom and avoided this
cruel fate in the hands of those whose job is to protect life and
liberty. For 84 days, the hapless man suffered in captivity and when
he saw a faint flicker of freedom, he died a frightening death.

Yet another
tragedy struck within four days of Ram’s. On July 15, early
evening, a group of about 20-armed militants entered the residential
colony of CCI, Bokajan, took 11 employees hostage, who included senior
mining manager KN Jha and mining supervisor Janardan Bhagat, and forced
them to walk. On the way, they hijacked a truck and herded the hostages
on to it. The truck fell into a roadside pond whereupon they resumed
their foot march taking along the truck’s driver and the cleaner.
Jha, unable to keep marching, begged the militants to shoot him and
soon collapsed and died. This heart-rending and pathetic incident
could not have happened had the police done their duty. At the least,
they should have intercepted the party while on their move, but there
was absolutely no attempt to do that. The militants on their own released
the other hostages consequent on Jha’s death. A week earlier,
the police was in the limelight not for doing their duty but for extorting
money from the truckers in broad daylight on the highway, compelling
the people to gather there and chase them. These incidents in quick
succession and many other crimes that are taking place without the
police being able to prevent or detect them, have raised a question
mark over police morale, efficiency and accountability.

It is a
welcome decision, as disclosed by the Chief Minister, to hand over
the Ram case to CBI for investigation. However, more importantly,
it is necessary to assess the functioning of the police, which is
the most visible arm of the State. The force is without a head on
a regular basis since January-end as the process of selecting the
DGP is yet to be completed. Unlike other departments, the police is
highly hierarchical with the leader exercising total control over
the subordinates, guiding and inspiring them. The leader must have
a sense of tenure security to enable him to exercise his authority,
and this vacuum seems to have made the force rudderless – devoid
of direction and accountability.

There is
a Unified Command (UC) in the State, which reviews the security scenario
and acts to contain militancy. Often the agencies involved in the
UC work on cross-purposes, guided more by one-upmanship rather than
operational imperatives. They are also prone to make tall claims,
like they have broken the backbone of ULFA and that it is a dying
outfit, and so on and so forth, that the public disdains. There are
many instances of mishandling of situations creating public furore
and opposition to Army operations. Such acts in the long-term perspective
prove to be quite counterproductive as the alienation of public grows
against them. In the Ram incident, they could have averted the fiasco
of exhuming the wrong corpse had the Army acknowledged that one of
their men was missing from there after ULFA had claimed to kill him
for being an Army spy. It was unbelievable why that poor man was sent
to a place where he could not merge with the local population, which
is the first precondition for collection of any intelligence.

Police function
is essentially an interface with the population. Without carrying
the people, they cannot perform. People are their clients, guides,
and conscience keepers, and they must, therefore, make it their first
charter of duty to guard the people from lawbreakers and assure them
a sense of security. What is happening now is just the opposite —
the people are at the mercy of militants and anti-socials without
any effective police intervention. The police needs to constantly
remember that they are the servants of law and not the servants of
politicians in power. Their loyalty must be to law and not to individuals.
After the Supreme Court directive on police reform, the State governments
are framing new legislations to provide functional autonomy to their
police forces.

It must, however, be remembered that autonomy does not mean license
to abuse power. We have to train, guide and inspire the police to
be accountable and effective, and insulate them from the vagaries
of shifting political power equations. For this, a person of impeccable
integrity and competence with deep understanding of the State’s
complex situation must head the State Security Commission mandated
by the Supreme Court. His track record and standing should be able
to command the confidence of the agencies involved in the management
of State security. Only such a person can integrate and unify the
multiple forces deployed in the State and transform the mindset of
the police and make them people-friendly, efficient and responsive
to the anguished voice of the citizens.

(The
writer , a former Director General of the Border Security Force and
the National Security Guard , is currently the State Chief Information
Commissioner , Assam)