The Human Rights Watch report of 2009 was a damning indictment on the abuse of power of the Indian police. It was called a damning indictment of the dis-function and impunity in the Indian police system and begins with a statement of a police officer to a member of the Human Rights Watch team, “This week I was told to do an encounter. I am looking for my target. I will eliminate him.”
Reports such as these are no longer eye openers but a reiteration of what we know and what is increasingly becoming an embedded part of our system. But as Herald has been forced to track the violations of the Goa police, through a series of incidents that scream for attention from us, we realise that torture and extra judicial killings aren’t the only forms of subjugation that an armed force can inflict upon its people.
If brutality is measured in terms of the duration and depth of the hurt and torture, then the Goa police have been far more brutal by its deliberate inaction, towards victims of rape and sexual torture, than a uniformed encounter specialist with a gun, and with an informal license to kill.
First Camurlim and now Mapusa. In a span of less than six months, four women have been allowed to be repeated victims of not just rape, but brutal assault by people known to them. For the cause of context, we need to bring them on record. In Camurlim a single mother was repeatedly beaten by her neighbour and his mother, who almost killed her with iron rods and then stuffed chilly powder into her vagina, an act committed by the mother of her neighbour. It is believed that the reason was property or some space in the slum they lived. The Mapusa PI registered a non cognizable case and repeatedly dissuaded the victim from proceeding any further. And when finally after media pressure forced the Chief Minister to comment on the case, investigations commenced but that too on paper. The panchnama was delayed and crucial evidence cleaned up from the spot leaving then police to merely go through the motions. Moreover the incident wasn’t a one off one but was going on for many months. An NGO had even brought the victim to a police day function in Panjim to narrate what was happening to her and this brave woman did so in the presence of police officers. Soon after that she was beaten up again almost to the point of death. Is there anything left to say after this? Will any editorialising explain this better?
Under this same police station, there lives a man who has been raping his mother in law, sister in-law and obviously his wife but that sometimes doesn’t pass as rape. There are three women whose lives are torn to shreds because of this constantly drunk man, who has apparently made sexual advances towards his own minor daughter too. Here too the Mapusa PI filed a non congnisable case and asked the victim to “settle”, while the Women police station asked the victim to go to a NGO. According to the victim’s version to the NGO looking after her, she was beaten again during this intervening time and when she desperately called 100, she was “advised” to come the next day.
There are two issues here. In both these cases, the occurrence of these incidents were prolonged and not one off. They were reported to the police, who even knew who the criminal was and who the victims were. Without giving any help to the victim, they protected the criminal, to the extent of asking the victim to settle with him. Thirdly both these incidents have redefined the gruesomeness of rape and torture, in a manner hitherto unknown. The victims are barely alive but with dead souls and spirit.
It is difficult at these times, and let us confess, we are genuinely at a loss of words or solutions. Will action against one PI or his superiors leading up to the SP of the district, put an end to this? It may not, but a beginning needs to be made. A defining example can be set if an IPS officer faces criminal charges of neglect along with her field officers.
The Chief Minister may be indeed sensitive to this, but unlike the way he looks at corruption in the TCP where he admits to most officers being corrupt, he cannot allow this degree of negligence, insensitivity and perhaps even abetment in the police force. We are dealing with lives here, of women and children, so action needs to be quick and decisive. No policeman or woman should have a peaceful nights’ sleep after such a degree of inhumanity.
