No doubt that Delhi Police connived with JNU admin and the ABVP, says former IPS officer 

I have no doubt in my mind that the police acted in connivance with the JNU administration and ABVP goons in letting the latter unleash violence in the campus against their perceived opponents, to the extent of letting them get away after they had achieved their aim of terrorising them.

It is quite obvious that such a directive would have been given, informally and orally of course. The BJP’s acolytes were simply allowed to do whatever they wanted, with the police looking the other way.

They simply can’t. Let’s take the JNU incident or the Jamia violence as an example. If the ruling party asked the incumbent Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik to ask his force to act in the manner in which they did, he wouldn’t really refuse. In his case, he’s due to retire at the end of the month in January, and if he could get an extension of even a few months by pleasing the political masters, he would go for it.

Others in his place have also taken orders from their political masters without questions, for benefits such as post-retirement jobs. It’s hard for a man donning khakis to imagine a life without it, you see.

Also, it’s not as if this is only happening since the BJP came into power. It’s always been the case, to a lesser degree earlier perhaps, but this is how it works.

Very much so, in the case of a Hindu policeman. This has been the case historically, since Independence, and has been revealed in so many riots starting with the Jabalpur case. But it can always be controlled by the senior officers in their role as leaders, if they wish to do so. This obviously didn’t happen in JMI and AMU.

Well, police officials at the thana level are actually expected to use third degree methods against the perceived criminals. There’s a sort of a social sanction for it. So, it’s not surprising.

The problem is that the basic structure of the police in the country has remained unchanged since British rulers of India put the police system in place in the 1800s. The basic manuals followed by the police, like the Indian Police Code (IPC) the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), Indian Evidence Act etc were all framed at the time, and this was not changed when the country gained Independence in 1947. So what do you expect?

As they say, people get a king they deserve. In the context of the police, I would say that people get the police they deserve.

I feel no reforms are possible until and unless the basic structure of the police is changed. Simply fixing the tenures of top officers or establishing commissions and boards or separating law and order and investigation wings is not going to achieve much in that direction.