Once a professional and feared force, Delhi Police now perceived as subservient to political masters

Three violent incidents in a row aimed against anti-CAA protestors have raised question marks over the capability and performance of Delhi Police, directly governed by the Union Home ministry, and once well regarded and feared for its apolitical and professional approach to crime.

In less than a week, three armed attempts to terrorise the peaceful demonstrators at Jamia and Shaheen Bagh, and disrupt and scare away people agitating against CAA-NPR-NRC, have been made. All in the presence of Delhi Police personnel present in large numbers at the affected spots, ostensibly to maintain law and order and “prevent untoward incidents.”

In the first instance, on January 30, an alleged juvenile delinquent fired on a procession of Jamia students and confidently walked back towards the policemen.

Two days later, another youth opened fire in the vicinity of Shaheen Bagh and shouted slogans against protestors. Both the culprits were caught by the police but only after they had completed their acts.

Despite widespread criticism of the failure of Delhi Police to prevent such incidents, once again on Sunday, February 2, another incident of firing on Jamia students was reported. No one was caught this time even as a group of Hindu Sena/ Bajrang Dal men were allowed to gather near the Shaheen Bagh dharna venue and permitted to shout profanities, hold out threats and give media bytes even as the police stood and watched.

Following the incident in early January when armed goons entered the JNU campus and attacked striking JNU students with Delhi Police allegedly providing safe passage to the armed intruders, the incidents at Jamia raised suspicion of complicity. Indeed, Delhi Police registered FIRs against the victims of the mob violence in the case of the JNU attack.

Significantly, no arrest has been made even after a month of the attack at JNU. Although a large number of video clips, audio chats and social media posts emerged to identify at least some of the culprits, Delhi Police appear immobilised into inaction.

Delhi Police have an unenviable job because its ‘Boss’, Union Home Minister Amit Shah himself has been busy whipping up a communal frenzy. He was the one who had declared publicly that time had come to teach ‘Delhi’s Tukde-Tukde gang’ a lesson. It was Shah again who called upon voters in Delhi to ensure that people in Shaheen Bagh bear the brunt of the electoral verdict in Delhi.

In another rally, MOS (Finance) Anurag Thakur led a mob to chant “Desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko” (shoot the traitors).

Delhi Police was once acknowledged to be a professional force, a thoroughly cosmopolitan body with no communal or caste prejudices.

There was a time when the then Deputy Commissioner of Police, Central District, Amod Kanth closed down the Anand Parbat cabaret owned by a Congress functionary. Instead of being hauled up, he was promoted to head the coveted Crime Branch to tackle Sikh militants in the late 1980s under Rajiv Gandhi.

Was there any instance of any minister going out to garland, reward and eulogise perpetrators of heinous crimes, like in the present BJP regime?

The Delhi Police secured life imprisonment for another Congress functionary, Sushil Sharma, who killed and butchered his wife and then tried to burn her body in a tandoor at a hotel/restaurant on Ashoka Road.

The accused in Jessica Lal murder case Manu Sharma, though closely related to the then President of India Shankar Dayal Sharma, is still languishing in jail. So is another politically well-connected Vikas Yadav, son of DP Yadav of Bulandshahr, a one-time MP, still in jail in the Nitish Katara murder case.

In the 1980s, one Balarj Chopra, also called the Cadillac pimp, threw a party at a Chhatarpur farmhouse in which many big wigs including the then Delhi mayor were present. Much was written about him and he tried to get the Delhi Police to remove his name from the list of B class bad character, but without any success.

That was Delhi Police before the present dispensation came into power. Former police officers still believe there is nothing wrong with Delhi Police but for the political leadership. If constitutional institutions like the Election Commission or higher judiciary cannot or are unwilling to make the likes of Amit Shah and UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath accountable, why point fingers at the police, even Delhi Police, asked an insider.

(Views are personal)