Rifts in police let criminals run free

Once again the Mumbai police’s strange and callous ways of operating have been exposed.

Whoever eventually takes the fall for sending Wazhul Khan’s name to Pakistan on a ‘most wanted’ list, there can be little doubt that the initial information originated in Mumbai. Khan, as it most embarrassingly turns out, does not live in Pakistan, has possibly never been to Pakistan and, in fact, lives in Wagle Estate in Thane and attends court regularly. He is an accused in more than one blasts case dating back to 2002-3 and is currently out on bail.

Anyone who has been following the Mumbai police closely knows that the bitter rivalry within beats even the hatred between the city’s gangs. Factions work closely to sabotage each other and as political patronage shifts from one group to another, different names take the limelight and different ways of operating take centre-stage. For the past few years, the beacon of confusion at the top of this pile has been RR Patil — Maharashtra’s home minister. Although he lost control of the police briefly after the debacle of the November 2008 terror attacks, he is now in charge again. He had, after the 26/11 attacks, informed us, if you will remember, that such small incidents happen quite often in large cities. Indeed!

But the whole blame cannot be put at Patil’s feet. The politicisation of the police began long before his political ambitions were fulfilled and there are many who believe that he feel prey to a powerful bureaucrat-police nexus within the administration. A good yardstick for the average citizen is to keep note of the number of times a senior police officer’s name appears in the press, especially when dramatic claims are made by him or her.

The truth is that the police had no clue about the arrival of terrorists from Pakistan and have wasted a good number of years chasing false leads or inventing their own in the various attacks made on this city. The manner in which the Anti-Terrorism Squad has veered between the usual suspects often caught in a knee-jerk response — Islamist terrorists — and those found by further investigation — Hindutva-inspired terror — depending on who is in charge of the squad provides evidence of this. Add to that the contradictory claims made by the crime branch and the ATS and you can understand the magnitude of the problem.

All this is made worse by the fact that the courts often acquit these so-called terrorists — most of whom happen to be Muslims, the favourite whipping boys of the Mumbai police — because of lack of evidence.

The upshot is that terrorists and criminals are running free because the police is so fractured, so politicised and so communalised that actual work is not being done. Let us look forward to plenty of public grandstanding as this new embarrassment is sought to be swept under a very dirty carpet.