Daily Times

More than three decades down the line, nothing much has changed with regard to policing in India, especially in the capital city of New Delhi, where the police have time and again proved his loyalties towards the ruling galleries. In New Delhi, the police are under the direct control of the Union Home Minister. For its acts of omission and commission, the Delhi police have been playing the role of collaborator in not only inciting violence but also abetting riots, apparently under the direct patronage of the ruling clique at the Centre. If one gives a look at Delhi police’s history of its acts of abetting violence, one easily finds that it does not go by rule of law while maintaining peace during ‘premeditated’ serious riots.

Two glaring examples of anti-minority riots in Delhi define the role of Delhi police in collaborating to the nefarious designs of the politicians for the petty vote bank. It played the role of a collaborator in 1984 anti-Sikh riots following the killing of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Delhi police played a prominent role along with political stooges of Congress party, members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), RSS activists and looters from Haryana and Uttar Pradesh (UP). The Delhi police officials with shining stars pinned on their shoulders, not only remained silent spectators when large crowds carrying fire weapons, sharp edged weapons, rods, lathis petrol containers, phosphorous bags swaggered into the Sikh localities, but also provided them voter lists to make their task of identifying Sikh areas easily. These mobs killed the Sikhs at will, burnt their commercial and residential properties. They kidnapped Sikh women, rapped hundreds of them and killed many of them. The Sikhs were burnt by spraying phosphorus and petrol on them. The insensitive crowd in presence of police cheered the crying and dying Sikhs.

It was 1984. Thirty-six-years have passed the character of the Delhi police has not changed a bit. Again in 2020, the Delhi police have repeated its role as a facilitator of killings and burning of minorities’ properties in East-Delhi region where the several Muslim colonies are located. In these colonies labourers such as masons, carpenters, auto-repair mechanics and factory workers, barbers etc resided. On its one side is UP and Haryana border where from half a dozen truckloads of extreme Hindu rightist with pre-meditated planning laced with sharped-edge weapons, rods and lathis and petrol canisters entered these Muslim localities with impunity and attacked, killed and wounded many Muslims at will. This time the Delhi police allowed the killer squads three days before it started intervening and made some fragile attempts to bring peace and impose law and other. No arrest has been made so far, no case has been filed against anyone for anti-Muslim riots.

1984 to 2020, police acted as political stooges to abet riots in Delhi

More facts about the North-East Delhi mayhem were brought out in a “Report of the Fact-Finding Committee on the North-East Delhi Riots of February 2020”, which states that right wing extremists were instrumental in killing and plundering of Muslim properties. The fact-committee highlighted that violence erupted in parts of North East Delhi on February 23, soon after BJP leader Kapil Mishra made a short speech asking for forcefully removing anti-Citizenship Amendment Act Anti (CAA) protesters at Jafrabad. The Committee, constituted by the Delhi Minorities Commission, has also observed, how over the next three days, mobs fanned out across the district targeting Muslims amid sloganeering ranging from “Jai Shri Ram” to “Har Har Modi”, “Modi ji, kaat do in mullon ko (Modi, cut these Muslims into pieces)” and “Aaj tumhe azadi denge (today, we will give you freedom)”.

In all, 53 people were killed in the violence while hundreds were injured and property worth hundreds of crores was destroyed. The report by the nine-member committee – chaired by Supreme Court advocate M.R. Shamshad, and comprising Haseena Hashia, Tehmina Arora, Gurminder Singh Matharu, Saleem Baig, Aditi Dutta, Tanvir Kazi, Abu Bakr Sabbaq and Devika Prasad – charged that even after the violence there continued to be bias against the Muslims in registration of FIRs and investigation of cases.

The report provides a detailed account of the circumstances leading to the violence and the riots through many testimonies. The committee said police officials either remained mute spectators or even participated in the violence. It said multiple testimonies recounted police inaction even as violence unfolded before them or of police not arriving despite being called repeatedly. “Testimonies also recall how the police were patrolling the area, but when asked for help, they refused saying they had no orders to act.” This, it said, suggested a “pattern of deliberate inaction over several days.”

The committee head also charged that “investigations have purposefully been misdirected to change the narrative of the cause of the violence that erupted in the North East district of Delhi.” He wrote that while instances of incitement of violence by politicians of national standing were “completely bypassed”, on the other hand well-respected persons like Dr M.A. Anwar of Al-Hind Clinic of Mustafabad has been castigated in the charge-sheet. “This reflects the partisan as a shoddy methodology adopted in the investigation process,” Shamshad alleged.

Providing a gist of the findings of the Committee, Shamshad wrote in his “foreword”, how “the victims of arson, loot, physical injuries etc. would stand better served with fast justice and even faster disbursement of monetary relief to the victims. Also, he lamented that “in most cases, charge-sheets have been filed by police first against Muslim accused and the entire narrative has been changed to one of violence on both sides rather than a pogrom that was in fact carried out.” Shamshad also observed in his remarks that “non-registration of FIRs or delayed action on complaints naming the accused of riots, loot, arson and murder has led to no investigation in many crucial cases.” He pointed out how “despite the High Court’s observations” no cases have been registered into cases like the shooting from Mohan Nursing Home and the inflammatory statements made by Mishra.

The report said the violence that followed was “organised” and had a “systematic pattern”. It observed that mobs of 100-1000 people fanned out chanting slogans and “selectively attacked Muslim individuals, houses, shops, vehicles, mosques and other property.” In many of the attacks, it said, outsiders were involved apart from local residents. Further rather than being spontaneous, the report said “the perpetrators positioned themselves strategically in the residential areas” which along with the testimonies revealed that the violence was planned and targeted.

The report also said mobs specifically vandalised Muslim places of worship as well as religious symbols, like copies of the Quran. On the other hand, it said religious places of worship of non-Muslims in Muslim-majority areas were largely left untouched, and in some cases were protected by the local Muslim residents.

The report also said prohibitory orders were either not enforced, or were only in name with no public notification and that “police also did not exercise powers to disperse unlawful assemblies or take measures to apprehend, arrest and detain that perpetrating violence.”

The police have also been accused of not presenting the charge sheets properly. The report said “crucial aspects of the entire chain of events are missing from most of the charge-sheets that have been filed till date” and which were accessed by the Committee. The report has also stated that Delhi Police’s refusal to disclose the names of the persons arrested or detained as stated in its status report submitted to the Delhi high court in the Brinda Karat v. Government of Delhi case of June 17, 2020 contravened and violated Section 41c of Criminal Procedure Code which provides for display of these details on the notice board of every district Police Control Room.

Thus, if we compare the role played by Delhi police in two different anti-minority riots, though temporally too distant, we come to the only conclusion that police acted as mere collaborators in the riots and have been appeasing political rulers in the centre.

The writer is a senior journalist and Indo-Pak peace activist