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If there were a Page Three for policemen, Daya Nayak would be top of the tops. Look at clippings from old newspapers and he’s always there, gun in hand, often with a score-sheet next to him, as if he were some famous cricketer. Sometime there would be other “players” next to him, with their own numbers: Pradeep Sharma 100, Daya Nayak 80, Ravindranath Angre 52, Vijay Salaskar 50…

In the case of Nayak, at least, the figures have changed rather dramatically recently. They are no longer about encounter killings but about money. His encounters are now with his own department, and they are not encounters with guns but with lawyers and accountants. The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) says that Nayak has assets disproportionate to his income. That seems an understatement considering that the ACB says that his assets total Rs 4 crore while his official income is under Rs 2 lakh a year.

Unfortunately for the police, and unfortunately for us, Nayak isn’t the only police inspector being investigated for disproportionate assets. Rajesh Dhanawade is alleged to have become a big time builder in and around Worli dealing in prime properties, while Baban Shiv Ram Kadam is being investigated by the Anti-Corruption Bureau for having accumulated assets of Rs 3 crore whereas the total earnings of Kadam and his wife, according to the ACB, would be a maximum of Rs 39 lakh.

From constables to inspectors to crorepatis? It’s upward mobility of a most meteoric kind. How can so much money be made so quickly? In the case of Kadam, the allegation is that he was involved in the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) scam, in which candidates to join the state police and the civil service are said to have paid lakhs each to get their examination answer papers switched. (Which, of course, means that corruption gets perpetuated, as unworthy candidates get in by paying money which they plan to recoup illegally). No one is saying yet how Daya Nayak made his money, though rumours have circulated for years that policemen (not necessarily Nayak) have extorted money from well-off businessmen by threatening them with “Encounters”. Or that some Encounter Specialists have earned lakhs from the underground by eliminating rival gangs.

Whatever’s the truth, it isn’t very savoury. Yet what should concern us isn’t just that it’s been happening but that it’s been allowed to happen for so long unchecked.

The first question we in the media should ask is of ourselves: Why has the media glorified encounters killings? Shockingly for any civilised society, the phrase “encounter deaths” has become an acceptable part of our vocabulary, when it’s nothing but extra-judicial murder. Criminals (and sometimes the completely innocent) are caught, a confrontation is staged and the unarmed target is shot dead. Yet the media has constantly glorified Encounter Specialists as if they were extra-ordinarily brave heroes. Heroes for killing a bound and gagged victim in cold blood? If that isn’t so, why is it that in all these years, no policeman has ever been injured in a shoot-out? Or that the last known casualty in an encounter was sub-inspector Prakash Lawand who was killed in the late 1980s?

Amazingly, the police top brass has encouraged this brutal short-cut. It’s only recent police commissioners like MN Singh and the present incumbent, AN Roy who have put their foot down and transferred these “specialists” to innocuous jobs.

The police top brass has also disregarded evidence of large-scale corruption in the ranks, corruption that occurs on a daily basis. Most senior officers pretend it doesn’t exist, reacting only when a scam gets noticed and becomes public. “This scandal is sullying the image of the police” is an often-repeated sentence from police chiefs when the fact is that the police have no image left to be sullied.

To the culpability of the police top brass and the media, add the culpability of the public. How often do members of the public report extortion attempts and bribe demands to the ACB or senior police officials? And how easily have we all accepted encounter killings as a necessary evil?

In the end, though, the buck has to stop with politicians. Conventional wisdom says that police corruption has a lot to do with political interference. This may well be true because it affects postings, tenure of efficient and honest policemen and so on. But the opposite is true too: political interference is also necessary. Because ultimately, it’s the government which must give directions to the police and pull up senior officers for letting their underlings run amok. If they don’t crack the whip, what are they in the government for?