Your Point… ........... Sohan, You Were Lucky—Otherwise..................… Ranjan Srivastava

Your Point…

Sohan, You Were Lucky—Otherwise…
                                                                                                         * Ranjan Srivastava

This incident has raised many serious questions about the functioning of the police and the government system. Unfortunately, this is not the first incident in which the police have forcibly implicated an innocent person and tried to ruin his life forever. Such incidents have happened earlier as well, but the “Sohans” of those cases were not fortunate enough that evidence of a crime fabricated by the police against them was captured on CCTV—and even if it was, their families were not in a position to take the matter to court and hope for relief.

Luck was on Sohan’s side. He was fortunate that the bus he was travelling in had a CCTV camera installed. He was also lucky that the CCTV camera was in working condition. Otherwise, today Sohan—an 18-year-old student from Rajasthan who was tortured by the police of Mandsaur district in Madhya Pradesh—would still be languishing in jail, and the police would have already filed a chargesheet in the trial court branding him a criminal.

Sohan, who passed Class 12 in the first division and dreams of becoming an officer, would have been shuttling back and forth between jail and court like a shuttlecock to prove his innocence. In the process, harassed by jail and police and deprived of justice, he might well have emerged as a hardened criminal.

All this would have happened simply because a few dishonest police officers and personnel of Malhargarh police station were determined to secure a conviction after showing Sohan’s arrest with opium allegedly recovered from him.

A single CCTV camera saved Sohan’s life. It was not because the police conscience awakened, but because his family reached the High Court with the CCTV footage, while Sohan—imprisoned without having committed any crime—was lamenting his fate in jail.

Initially, the Mandsaur police even denied before the court that the people seen in plain clothes taking the student away in the CCTV footage were police officers. However, the district’s new Superintendent of Police admitted in court that they were personnel from Malhargarh police station and that action had been taken against all of them.

After the petition in the High Court, the Superintendent of Police of Mandsaur district had to suspend six police personnel, including TI Rajendra Panwar, Sub-Inspector Sanjay Pratap and Sajid Mantri, and constables Narendra Singh, Jitendra Singh and Dilip Jat.

But did Sohan really get justice? Is it truly possible to compensate for the mental and physical torture inflicted upon this student by falsely implicating him in a case of possessing opium, subjecting him to torture, and sending him to jail?

This incident has raised many serious questions about the police and government system. Unfortunately, this is not the first case in which the police have committed a crime by forcibly implicating an innocent person and trying to destroy his life forever. Such incidents have occurred earlier as well, but the “Sohans” of those cases were not fortunate enough that evidence of police wrongdoing against them was captured on CCTV—and even if it was, their families were not able to take the matter to court and hope for relief.

This incident is even more serious because it involves a police station that had been awarded the tag of being the ninth best police station in the country. If this is the condition of one of the country’s best police stations, one can easily imagine the state of those not considered good.

Cases of poor functioning and rampant corruption in the police department keep surfacing from time to time. Yet neither the government seems concerned about reforming the department, nor do the officers. Everyone sits with eyes closed in a “this is how things work” mode.

Police reforms are often talked about, but no one actually implements them. Political parties raise loud demands for police reforms while in opposition, but once in power, their first attempt is not to change the existing system, but to figure out how to misuse the police to tighten the noose around the opposition.

In the final days of their careers, the Director General of Police and other senior officers also avoid making any fundamental changes to the police system. Perhaps they too know that in the present political setup, even thinking about radical reform is futile, let alone implementing it. Occasionally, a few directions or warnings are issued to complete the ritual, and many Sohans in society are turned into lifelong criminals by police stations, with their futures destroyed forever.

Until effective “checks and balances” are established in the police department and the supervisory role is strengthened, Sohans will continue to be framed as accused and criminals by police stations.

On paper, from the DGP to the DSP, there appears to be a strong system to monitor the working of the police at lower levels and to protect innocents. But in reality, only a handful of officers discharge their responsibilities. The rest continue to nurture and sustain this system for their own interests. Even in Mandsaur, the SP took action against the policemen only after the victim student’s family approached the High Court seeking justice.

Today, when the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly convened a special session on “Abhyuday Madhya Pradesh,” can we hope that after this serious incident, the Madhya Pradesh government and the police—from the DGP to the SP, all links in this chain—will fold their hands and apologize to Sohan and his family, and resolve that no other student or innocent person will be tortured by the police like Sohan? That such exemplary action will be taken against guilty policemen that it becomes a precedent not only for the state but for the entire country? This is a burning question—but we also know the answer. This will not happen.

Shri Ranjan Srivastava is a senior journalist. After serving as Bureau Chief and Senior Journalist with leading newspapers including the English dailies Hindustan Times and Free Press, Bhopal, he is currently based in Bhopal and regularly writes independently on contemporary issues and politics.
Contact: 94253-51688 | Email: ranjansrivastava1@gmail.com