Kicking of disabled man by railway police shows how men in uniform misuse power
Two men in uniform kicking and slapping a man who has only one leg.
After video footage of Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel beating a physically challenged person at the Balasore railway station in Odisha went viral, Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has ordered a probe into the incident.
The disabled person was being punished for allegedly stealing a cell phone from a passenger. While some news reports said the victim was pulled out of the Guwahati-Bangalore Express, others suggested that the man has been earning his livelihood by sweeping floors in trains between Balasore and Bhadrak railway stations.
The two personnel were joined by a common man in kicking the victim to the ground while one more RPF man looked on. Around 25 seconds and 11 kicks later, the victim is left lying on the ground with his crutches even as an unaffected group of onlookers disperse.
The video is one more reminder of the fact how we take pleasure in someone else’s pain, especially when that someone is helpless and can’t put up much defence. This urge to see justice done (and the guilty punished) immediately at the crime scene has led to various similar incidents, including fatal mob violence, in the past too.
While violence against people with physical and mental disabilities often goes unreported, the latest incident also shows our scant regard for the dignity of the disabled population. Most importantly, it shows how members of law enforcement agencies misuse the power bestowed on them by their uniforms.
The question here is not whether the man committed the crime he was accused of, but the way the punishment was doled out, by whom and on what grounds.
Sadly, violent episodes of “instant justice” mostly involve victims accused of petty crimes. We don’t usually see high-profile accused getting beaten up by police or a mob. Other than occasional ink-splashing and shoe-hurling attacks, there has almost been no such incident where a man with considerable “reputation in the society” has been beaten up in public. They, on the contrary, either spend cooling heels in high-security jails with easy access to comfort (as some recent selfies suggest) or in some foreign country with which India doesn’t have any extradition treaty.
While a routine inquiry into the Balasore incident is a welcome move, a crash course on humanity doesn’t sound too harsh for security forces deployed for public protection.