People friendly police

The Gauhati High Court’s observations in the on-going case of unlawful detention of a lactating mother in a police station in the Dhubri district last month, as reported on the front page of this newspaper in its Saturday edition, have once again brought to the fore the fact that the police in Assam are far short of becoming a people-friendly force. It may be recalled that the High Court had recently expressed grave displeasure over the reported detention of a lactating mother and her breastfeeding baby in a police station in the Dhubri district for at least six days, along with four other persons who had been accused of a gruesome murder that occurred a couple of weeks ago. The particular officer who was pulled up by the High Court was obviously the Superintendent of Police of Dhubri, who incidentally happened to be a lady officer belonging to the elite Indian Police Service (IPS). While the state government shunted out the lady officer to another district and also transferred out most of the police officers attached to the particular police station where the lactating mother was kept detained, the High Court, for its part, expressed displeasure over why the state government had stopped short of placing the lady IPS officer under suspension. It is worth noting that the High Court also placed on record the fact that the officers investigating the case ‘created’ a post-investigation FIR on May 31 in spite of the fact that two previous FIRs had already been registered in relation to the killing of one Baser Ali. According to the High Court’s observation, it clearly appears that this FIR was registered so as to somehow justify the arrest of the lactating mother, namely Rokiya Khatun. The High Court’s observation that such a procedure was totally alien to the principles of criminal jurisprudence is also noteworthy in this context and should be a lesson for all police officers who have a tendency to flout the law or attempt to bend the law according to their own convenience. Several years ago, the Assam Police earned a name across the nation for having adopted a people-friendly approach. Assam Police had not only launched a couple of specific child-friendly projects but had also sent several officers abroad for higher training on community-friendly policing.