A day in the life of a woman cop

The first time she faced a violent crowd, or as it is described in the proper police terms: unlawful assembly, she was wondering if all those periods at horse riding in the academy really helped! It was a mob, no doubt about it, she had a concussion on her right forehead, deftly covered with some hair (she did not want the crowd to have the satisfaction of seeing her injured) and a broken left hand to show for it at the end of the day. The ustaad at the police academy always said “maidan me pasina bahaogey, toh field me khoon nahi bahega!” Well he never said anything about patthar and galiyaan.

The cause: a passenger vehicle, which probably did not have requisite documents, driven by a driver who probably did not have a valid license, who takes these driving tests seriously; all you need is Rs 2,000 and some contacts, mowed down a 38-year-old father on a bicycle when he was taking his son to school. It was painful to see their dead bodies with most of the contents of the head sprayed on the streets. Apparently, the local police station staff did not reach on time. The police station is 15 minutes drive away. The ambulance did not reach in time. Dialing 108 is sometimes a tedious process. The public blocked the road, causing misery to many others who had to go to the neighbouring districts.

There are a myriad of scenarios to which no answer has been found. Cops just wing it, so to speak. In districts with paucity of force, if the staff of a police station has to react fast, they can go only with whatever available personnel they have and whatever equipment available. That opens them to the risk of facing the ire of the unruly and possible dangerous crowd. This small number could be easily overrun and there have been examples where police have been lynched because they were in smaller numbers. However, if they wait for additional force to arrive, so as to be better prepared, then they stand to face the ire of the crowd for delayed response. In addition, this also opens them to departmental action for causing delay. Anyway, cops wing it, some successfully and sometimes with disastrous results. You see, the original jurisdiction of maintenance of law and order and crime prevention, detection and investigation lies with the police. Interestingly, the law says that the power lies with the civil administration, essentially to ensure that barbarism or police high-handedness does not occur. This civil administration is rarely seen, has to be unduly pursued even to the extent of putting one in your gypsy, and is never placed under suspension for failure of public order maintenance. The police are the favourite piñata of all sections of society across geographical lines in the country.

It took about seven hours of negotiation to open the road blockade. Another 12 passed by, before she could see a doctor who put her arm in a sling right away and it stayed that way for three weeks after that. And it was about eight months later that a man came and prostrated before her during an election rally. He had strange scars all over his forehead. Startled she made his stand up and asked him about his antecedents. It was that when she found out that he was that driver of the passenger vehicle who had a fake license. The crowd had dragged him out of the vehicle and had brutally beaten him. As he ran and jumped into a nearby pond, the crowd gathered long bamboo pikes and tried to spear him. It was then that he has sustained such grievous injuries on his person including fracture of his skull at three places that left such a jigsaw of scars. It is a miracle he survived after being rescued by the police.

Before dousing the vehicle interiors with illegal petrol sold in bottles along the highway, the more industrious members of the crowd had pulled out the seats, tires and music system from the vehicle. They were recovered later from nearby residences. She kept the stone that hit her head and gave her a concussion for a long time in her vehicle. It was a lesson never taught in the police academy. She doesn’t remember where she lost it, perhaps one day when the vehicle went for servicing. The injury on the hand came about by one of the police lathis. That was another lesson never taught in the academy. These big unwieldy fibre lathis, supposedly modernised are not ergonomically designed. Any lathi charge means that the stick has to be raised about the head. Then there is no control which way or how far it would reach. Managing our own troops is tough. Each man/woman is made of a different mettle. Not everyone believes that as a cop if a section of people (you know what I mean) don’t like you then it means that you’re doing your job right. Are you thinking about the horses in the academy? Staring at that drunk, wild-eyed crowd, shouting abuses at the police, hurling stones, burning passenger vehicles, blocking the road, trying to kill the driver who had jumped into a pond, she wondered how horse riding lessons in the academy were supposed to teach them how to overcome their fear? Could the knowledge of controlling a large animal help in facing an unlawful assembly? The fall from Maharaja that she endured when she wanted him to jump across the four-feet tall obstacle, but he decided to veer left, but she jumped anyway only to be dragged with her right foot caught in the stirrup until the ustaad came and calmed the horse was probably more of a life’s lesson in dealing with crowds. Learn to deal with the unpredictable.

Guess what: She walked away from that fall with some bruising and some cuts.