IPS Association’s selective outrage at New York Times report on Delhi riots

A report in The New York Times under the headline, “How Delhi Police turned against Muslims’ has drawn the ire of the IPS Association, which has described the report as an attempt to defame Indian institutions.

The Association on Thursday maintained that policemen in uniform are all Indians and not ‘ Hindus and Muslims’ and had done their duty impartially. The series of tweets tagged the Prime Minister and Home Minister Amit Shah, who had defended and praised the role of Delhi Police in Parliament.

This is what the IPS Association tweeted:

· We strongly condemn the article in New York Times on the conduct of police in Delhi riots, which is a combination of biased reporting, dangerous innuendo and outright lies. The article is clearly a concerted effort to denigrate and defame Indian institutions.

· Indian Police forces are professional bodies which do their duty without fear or favour. Our personnel are neither Hindus nor Muslims. They are Indians, serve Indians and during critical times they have also sacrificed their lives for Indians.

· It is easy to cast aspersions on Police but here is a reminder that two security personnel have lost their lives in the riots and more than 70 were injured. India’s Police forces will keep doing their duty and ensure every Indian is protected.

The role of Delhi Police has come in for widespread criticism during the last few months for acts of omission and commission. A number of video clips are available in the public domain which show the indifference and complicity of the police.

Policemen are not only seen breaking CCTV cameras but also leading the mob, pelting stones and in one infamous video, they are seen assaulting a group of young men lying prone on the ground and force them to sing the national anthem.

Neither the Home Minister nor the IPS Association has condemned such acts. Nor has any action been taken against the policemen. In the face of such public evidence, the tweets of the Association has caused both amusement and derision.

In a tweet to the IPS Association, a Twitter user said : “ If you are a professional force, do clarify 1) why you have not been able to arrest anybody for attack on JNU; 2) Why were you shooting students in the library in Jamia and 3) why can’t you arrest anybody for ‘Hate Speech’ in Delhi ?

Another user sarcastically quipped, “Easy to tweet out to international media than asking your colleagues to do their job”.

The New York Times ground report from Delhi reported that when the rioting started, policemen were asked to deposit their firearms in the police station. Badly outnumbered and having just sticks to deal with mobs, their pleas for forearms were ignored.

It also quoted a victim say, “They started beating him and several other Muslims. As the men lay bleeding, begging for mercy — one of them died two days later from internal injuries — the officers laughed, jabbed them with their sticks and made them sing the national anthem.”

“The police were toying with us,” the victim said. He recalled them saying, “Even if we kill you, nothing will happen to us.”

The report also mentioned:

· A police commander said that as the violence erupted — at that point mostly by Hindu mobs — officers in the affected areas were ordered to deposit their guns at the station houses. Several officers during the violence were later overheard by New York Times journalists yelling to one another that they had only sticks and that they needed guns to confront the growing mobs. Some researchers accuse the police force of deliberately putting too few officers on the streets, with inadequate firepower, as the violence morphed from clashes between rival protesters into targeted killings of Muslims.