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Why are the Patna Police so
keen that the local Media should only report
the angle it wants in the Papiya murder
case?
"It's a planned burglary,
don't you see that? They came in a car,
wanted her laptop and keys to her car.
Papiya resisted and hence they had to kill
her. "Easy man, it's a open and shut case;
'Bas yahi to likhna hai,' the cops insist
and with some desperation.
The officials are in fact
calling up media men voluntarily and
suggesting their own line even before the
media can say "ummm". And this, when lower
level cops vehemently deny Papiya's case
could ever be so simple as a fallout of a
burglary.
The angle of burglary solves
many problems that a dehumanised and
demoralised police force cannot tackle
otherwise. First: the sections for burglary
are simpler, next to nothing by way of
legwork is called for. Investigations do not
have to be protracted. No conspiracy
theories have to be worked on. The paper
work is less. Special Teams need not be
constituted. Bigger people need not be
investigated. Embarrassment levels would
always be lower with this angle. And,
superior officials can get away with the
theory: "Burglars are petty, not many are on
police records, it's difficult to trace
them." With all that, Policemen can walk
free of the case, as can the culprits.
It's obvious, that Papiya's
sister, Tuktuk Ghosh's fears are not being
given the respect that are due. Tuktuk has
already said, her late sister had been
abused, intimidated many a time by people
around and her house stoned. Who were these
people? Certainly burglars do not live in
huge, swanky buildings in Patliputra!
There is also a history in
the form of a station diary in the
Patliputra Thana when a
politician-academician was involved in her
intimidation. Yet, the Police are in a
tearing hurry to walk away from the scene
and as it is obvious they want to close the
case as soon as it can. All this when the
DGP would have us believe that the Chief
Minister was insisting that all cases should
be meticulously pursued and the law would
take its own course, irrespective of who was
involved.
Why? Who is involved,
please? Will the feuding policemen ever let
us know?
The Government's
embarrassment on the same day as the Police
officials were being feted is not something
the Chief Minister can afford to forget in a
hurry. So, the largest worry for these
officials is to hide the substantive
arguments, go for the petty one and make it
look real and see that it sticks. If not
anywhere else, in the media at least. For
the media, such proclamations, coming as
they do from top cops or the 'horse's
mouth', represent the final word and is to
be lapped up. To the contrary, however, what
these cops are doing is to represent their
failure as strength by practicing the
Goebellian dictum that you have to lie again
and again to be able to make it look good
and true.
This writer has experienced
the alacrity with which intelligence
personnel used to try to plant stories in
the interested Press with perfect timing
after they had already filed a report on
some imagined plot by Naxalites or
criminals. Once In the Press, the lead info
in the Police File would then look all the
more credible with their superiors in the
Home Department. Forget, that such imaginary
plots never happened, the reason why the
Bihar Intelligence service never busted a
single plot and neither could predict until
it was all over and miles from where
anything was predicted to happen. The same
type of effort is now being put in to prove
burglars killed Papiya.
The ridiculous length to
which the police have gone in the Papiya
case is getting obvious too. Orders have
gone out to Thanas to prepare a 'Directory
of Bihar burglars operating in Patna! Do the
cops believe, it could be an all time
bestseller or is it a novel technique in the
evolution of its police-public partnership
effort? If all that Patna wanted was a
burglars list after every murder, the police
force could as well go to sleep and we
should all be content with the crime around.
Or are the police planning to bag a Booker
for its book on 'Burglars Inc'? It wouldn't
till it put some of its officers in the
actual plot for credibility!
That the State
Administration, swearing by their better law
and order situation, has taken a big hit is
obvious from the alacrity with which a
reward was announced for information leading
to the culprits' arrest and the CID was
hurriedly co-opted. On Wednesday, there was
news, that more officers were being drafted
because the present set of officers, are
proving to be incompetent. Are the cops so
helpless, that even four days after the
incident, they had not been able to locate
the deceased's car.
That the people on the
street have more common sense than this set
of cops, out to nab petty thieves, is
obvious from the first reactions: People
query why can't the killers actually warp
their entire effort of murder by making it
look like a burglary? The extra effort of
the police to swallow the killers' gamble to
distract-hook, line and sinker- actually
calls into question the investigation temper
and their khaki's worth. Do we have to rely
on this police, so low on I.Q to protect
us?So, watch out on your telly for that
rickshaw-puller in your locality who may
have been taking your children and
grandchildren to school each day, standing
with his face covered in a thana and the
police claiming a reward for having solved
the case so swiftly and recovered the booty
(which may be hired from the repairs shop)
and making for a happy Tipsy Thursday! By
the time we see the 'culprit', he would have
already been thrashed out of this world and
would be too ready to accept that he stuck
that knife into the victim's tummy.
To the simple man on the
street, this case is not being bungled. They
have bungled on the evidence already. Isn't
it time, the DGP and the IGP, Patna went on
a long walk somewhere?
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