Food For Thought

Administrative logic can often get so distorted due to misplaced priorities that common sense takes a beating. Take police administration in Assam, for instance. The man in the street may wonder why he never sees beat constables maintaining order and that crucial connection with the public. It would be explained to him that the woeful manpower in the police force simply does not allow such a luxury. He may next ask how the investigative cell in the average police station in Assam fares in solving crimes. There may be blank stares or pitying smiles before it is again explained to him that this is a bigger luxury the State police force cannot afford.

Whatever crime investigation the police do in the course of duty has to be often sacrificed at the altar of ‘law and order’. With a nearly three-decade-old history of insurgency, high priorities were assigned to hunting down militants and ensuring safety of VIPs & VVIPs. If this pushed to the backseat good old crime investigation which matters to common people, it was too bad but what was to be done? Ironically, most killings (secret or open) committed by regular militants and their former comrades who had switched over to the government, as well as by law enforcers — remain unsolved to this day. It would be instructive to know how many cases of ordinary killings and other heinous have been solved over the years. A common grouse among the few investigating officers (IOs) in police stations is the crushing workload they carry from one transfer posting to another. These are the men assigned to investigating and following up cases, but as soon as they are transferred, the trail gets cold and cases reach dead ends. The pitiful shortage of key chemicals and lack of maintenance of equipment in forensic labs also stymied the efforts of IOs.

Unsolved crime cases cause loss of faith in the police force and heighten public insecurity. There is some hope of improvement now with Gauhati High Court’s recent order to Assam government to operationalize separate investigation wings in police stations. The government furnished a list of 435 police officers to the court, and they are to be assigned to solely crime investigation duty after specialized training. This is a step that has been recommended in various reports about police reforms earlier, notably one after the October 30 serial blasts in 2008. If it proceeds well, it would surely kickstart the professionalization of the police force that the State government has been promising for long.

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