Herald View: Torture and police brutality are glorified in popular culture

It is only in Indian films that justice is delivered in less than three hours, mostly by super heroes in uniform who take law into their hands and deliver ‘bloody’ retribution by killing the bad guys. To be fair, the films do show both good cops and bad cops but the heroes are invariably superhuman men, who single handedly take on the evil, the vile and the powerful. In dialogue after dialogue they drill into the audience that securing justice in law courts is time-taking and costly. Bullets are cheaper and faster.

These men, from Rowdy Rathore to Saamyand Singham, are glorified for what they achieve on screen through torture and brutality and often bypassing the law. There is sanction for such brutality from the state as well as sections of the judiciary, which is why although as many as 1,700 custodial deaths were reported in the country last year, few policemen were punished and that too following public or political pressure and not because they did anything illegal. In the Sohrabuddin Shaikh encounter killing investigated by the CBI and in which case the present Home Minister Amit Shah was the main accused, as many as 96 prosecution witnesses turned hostile and the arrested policemen were reinstated and some were even promoted.

It may not be fair to place all blame on films but Indian films do enjoy an exaggerated influence over our lives and have undoubtedly contributed to building the popular and political culture of rowdyism, senseless violence and a slavish attitude to the uniform. They have also contributed in no small measure to the social acceptance that policemen in uniform are there to actually hurt than help.This has eroded faith in the justice delivery system and its ability to deliver justice. The faith has plunged to such depths that in a horrifying incident in Delhi’s Tihar jail, a man first killed someone to get himself imprisoned and then bided his time before killing his sister’s rapist lodged in the jail.

This widespread social acceptance of police brutality explains why the outrage over the killing of a father and son in Tamil Nadu’s Tuticorin has been so shortlived. Jeyaraj(63) and his son Fennix(32) were arrested for the ‘crime’ of keeping their shop open beyond the lockdown hours. And their punishment was instant and swift as they were beaten through the night with policemen using their ‘lathi’ to cause severe internal injuries. The father and son literally bled to death. The policemen tried to destroy evidence and even the CCTV camera at the police station was configured in such a way that the recorded footage got deleted within 24 hours.

Despite a public uproar, mostly in Tamil Nadu, the doctor who gave the father and son a clean bill of health, the magistrate who perfunctorily and casually forwarded them to a sub jail rather than a hospital, have not faced any consequence. The policemen, though suspended, remain belligerent in the belief that they too would get away. What the society is up against is not just a few rogue policemen but against an entire system that has gone rogue. Platitudes and laying down a code of conduct etc. are no longer enough. What is needed to make a beginning is to acknowledge that we have a serious crisis of culture. How to overcome this culture is the challenge that the society must confront and win.