Please - Odhikar

General findings
It becomes difficult for police to maintain neutrality and perform the professional duty of
maintaining law and order in politically difficult situations. Police may need to open fire, lob
tear gas, charge batons to disperse unruly crowds or to prevent clashes between two politically
rival groups. The nature of mob behavior and extent of tension are the factors behind police
action in such volatile situations. Sometimes police have to open fire for self-defense. Whatever
the situation may be, police have to maintain utmost restraint, show patience and remain within
legal provisions in managing such situations. However, due to the chaotic nature of such
situations, it becomes difficult to find out whether police action/behavior is responsible for death
of innocent people in such situations.
The role of other specialized law enforcement forces like the Coastguard and Forest Guards need
to be reviewed. There have been allegations reported in newspapers and by local level human
rights activists that instead of catching pirates and smugglers in coastal and forest areas, these
forces help such criminals in plundering the country’s resources. In doing so, sometimes they try
to make innocent people victims of their illegal acts. Sometimes, their actions have been found
excessive and as such violating the rights of common people.
Newspapers sometimes publish reports, out of small incidents or rumors, of human rights
violations by law enforcement personnel in order to create cheap publicity without checking and
verifying properly the real facts. This amounts to abuse of press freedom.
Law enforcement personnel try to cover-up their misdeeds and incidents of human rights
violations by offering money or other incentives to victims. They try to use their official
positions, influence and connections for creating pressure on victims/complainants to make a
compromise and not to take legal action or create any issue out of such incident. Vulnerable,
poor people have no way but to succumb to such pressure.
The government, at regular intervals, conducts special drives and operations in search of
hardened criminal groups. Generally joint forces comprising police, armed police, border
security force and ansar take part in such special operations. Although such drives are conducted
on the basis of specific intelligence information, sometimes misinformation makes innocent
people victims of human rights violations by such joint forces. Such operations should be
planned more carefully to avoid any excessive harm.
Sometimes, innocent people become victims of human rights abuse due to police negligence in
properly verifying the identities of arrested persons. Among a number of arrested persons,
presumably innocent people who have no connection with a particular incident get arrested and
unnecessarily harassed by police.
The intelligence apparatus of the law enforcement agencies is neither strong nor reliable. It has
been found that in many cases, police informants provided wrong information, which caused
harassment of innocent people by police. Sometimes police informants, by using the threat of
police harassment, try to get illegal favors from people. It is widely known that the Police,
probably in order to suppress their inefficiency, try to emphasise on the wrong information
provided by informants in order to complete their investigations and make arrests.
For ensuring justice, in the case of crimes committed by police personnel, it is not proper to
assign one police officer to investigate human rights abuse or crimes committed by another of
the same Thana. Unfortunately, this is being done, which has raised questions about the
credibility of such investigations. An independent police investigation unit is essential in this
regard.
Report 2005
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