POLICE BRUTALITY AND MINORITIES

“When cruelty won’t be nurtured in ill-omened social norms;

When hands won’t be cut and heads won’t be tossed about;
When world government is run without jails,
That dawn will come through us.”

- SAHIR LUDHIANVI

INTRODUCTION

Rule of law is a fundamental feature of our Constitution and no person, including those who are
appointed to protect it, are allowed to degrade it.

Police Brutality is lethal and unwarranted force against a civilian. This includes, but is not limited to,
bullying, physical or verbal harassment, physical or mental injury, property damage, and death. Police
Brutality is often seen with the minority groups in a country.

The relationships between police and ethnic and racial minorities present some of the more enduring
and complex problems in policing throughout the world. Such relationships can be harmonious, but they
often are problematic. For example, minorities may be generally deprived of police protection and other
services to which they are entitled. More specifically, police may refrain from addressing criminal
behaviour (e.g., domestic violence) within a particular minority group because they believe that
members of that group typically engage in such behaviour. A more acute problem is direct conflict
between police and minorities. On the part of police, conflict may take the form of harassment,
brutality, or excessive enforcement.

Although it is no excuse for lack of fairness, police attitudes toward minorities reflect the values of the
larger community. When the community is hostile toward a particular minority group, police may feel
that discriminatory behaviour toward that group is justified. Police even may aggravate an existing
prejudice, though they seldom generate prejudice on their own.

REASONS OF BRUTALITY

The intensity of community and police prejudice against minority groups depends on historical and
social factors. The longer a minority has been seen as inferior or alien, the more likely it is to be
discriminated against. Such groups may include perennial nomads (such as the Roma in Europe),
indigenous peoples in former European colonies, or smaller tribes in societies where tribal membership
is socially significant. A war or a warlike situation can provoke hostility toward certain immigrant groups
or other minorities perceived as the “enemy”: Japanese Americans were treated in this way during
World War II, as were many Muslims in Western countries after the terrorist attacks in the United States
in September, 2001.

Police discrimination also may occur when the majority of a society perceives a minority group as
refusing to endorse the majority’s values. For instance, the conspicuously inferior status of women in
some immigrant communities in Western countries has engendered considerable hostility toward the
men in those communities.
Finally, circumstantial resentment plays an important part in discrimination against minorities:
immigrant workers who were welcomed by the majority when work was plentiful may be the target of
harassment in periods of unemployment.

POLICE BRUTALITY IN THE WORLD

Since the past few weeks conversations on Police brutality have been erupted around the world in the
wake of the cold-blooded killing of an unarmed African-American man, at the hands of Minneapolis
police on May 25. While racism continues to plague America, this incident shook the society’s
conscience, and they have taken to the streets ever since, to protest against racism and police brutality.
The footage of the incident went viral, sparking international outrage. The video shows 46-year-old
George Floyd being pinned to the ground by a white police officer kneeling on his neck, which caused
him to asphyxiate, and subsequently led to his death.

So People across the world condemned racism in the US. India doesn’t have to look further from home,
as it has its fair share of George Floyds, more often than not, who go nameless. The 2019 protests in
India, against the Centre’s Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens intensified this
list. While Indians and notable celebrities jumped to call out the perpetrators of racism abroad, their
long-drawn silence over the protests in our country was deafening. Due to the platform and masses they
command, their refusal to call out blatant injustice and discrimination was a great disservice to the
nation’s public. 

POLICE BRUTALITY IN INDIA

Police brutality and intimidation, particularly against Muslims and lower castes, has been rampant in
India for decades. The police in India have long been the judge, jury and executioner among the working
class and poor. Police brutality is caste and class sensitive. While the middle and upper classes or
privileged upper castes can’t even imagine getting thrashed by the police in broad daylight, Dalits,
Adivasis, Muslims, and labourers live with this reality. Of the 1,731 people killed in custody in 2019, 60
per cent of the victims belonged to marginalised communities.

In his report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in April 2001 1, the Special
Rapporteur on Torture, Sir Nigel Rodley made the following observations about the situation of
torture of Police in India:

‘The brutality is sometimes linked with corruption and extortion and is often deployed in the service of
local vested interests, be they economic or official. The use of excessive and indeed unprovoked and
unjustified force is common, especially in response to protests demanding rights. The persecution of
those pursuing complaints against the police is a not infrequent phenomenon.... In general, while not
absolute, the level of impunity among police and security forces seems sufficiently substantial as to
conduce a general sense among such officials that their excesses, especially those committed in the line
of duty, will at least be tolerated, if not encouraged.’

COLONIAL ORIGINS OF INDIAN POLICE AND BRUTALITY

1
UN doe: ElCN.4/2001l66, para 583
If you scratch the surface of India's so-called democracy and secular constitution, you will still find the
edifice of colonial rule. The brutality of the Indian police today can be traced to the Police Act of 1861,
which remains in force to this day. The act empowered police officers and the policing structure to crush
riots and dissent, instead of protecting the population and preventing crimes. When the British finally
took over India from the East Indian Company, they implemented a more structured form of policing to
suppress the native population.

The Indian penal code and criminal laws haven't changed since the colonial era. This clearly shows the
real brutal character of the Indian state which always hides behind “democracy” and a liberal
constitution. This bourgeois democracy and constitution is there to give a cover to this brutality, which
expresses itself nakedly in a police station. Where the poor can be beaten to death even without a
charge against them, a rich person guilty of murder can walk free with bribes and connections to higher
authorities.

POLICE BRUTALITY STATISTICS

Police brutality is glaringly rampant in the Indian context.

The study titled Status of Policing in India, 2019 surveyed police officers, questioning them about their
tendency to use violence. It revealed that the dominant perception among police in Karnataka,
Chattisgarh, Bihar and Nagaland was to justify violence by assuming their role as the ‘punisher’. The
police in West Bengal, Odisha, Kerala and Punjab were found to be least likely to use violence. The
former group also voiced their preference to employ extra-judicial methods to ‘resolve matters’, where
they would punish the criminals rather than go through legal ordeal. The latter on the other hand,
preferred judicial trials as opposed to meting out informal ‘justice’. 36% of the police officers admitted
to using punishment for minor offences, as an alternative to legal trial.

An analysis by Scroll found that 50% of Indian citizens approved of police brutality. This has held true
on several occasions, where the police have been lauded for reining in miscreants. A recent evidence of
this is when the country celebrated the extra-judicial killing, or under the guise of ‘self-defence’ as
claimed by the police; where the four rapists, who raped and killed a 27-year-old veterinary doctor
in Hyderabad, were shot dead in custody. People’s blood thirst was evident when they heaped praises
on the police officer who shot the four, claiming the deliverance of ‘true justice’. Officers agreed that
killing the convicts of heinous crimes was ‘justifiable’ than judicial sentences.

RECENT INCIDENTS OF BRUTALITY OF POLICE ON MINORITIES

JAMIA INCIDENT, DECEMBER 15, 2019

As the nationwide protests against Centre’s CAA and NRC raged on, the country on December 15, 2019,
witnessed an obscene abuse of power, when armed police and paramilitary forces stormed the gates of
Delhi’s JamiaMilliaIslamia University, to forcibly quell the student protests. The students watched in
horror as the agency entrusted with the upkeep of law and order, shelled tear gas, rubber bullets, lathi-
charged students and vandalised campus property. Media quoted hospitals saying they tended to
students with bullet wounds. 

NORTHEAST DELHI RIOTS, FEBRUARY 23, 2020

The communal riots of Delhi that claimed 53 lives, was another gory blotch on Delhi’s history that
witnessed large scale bloodshed and violence. A viral video made rounds on social media where five
men were seen lying on the ground, surrounded by armed policemen who were prodding them to sing
the national anthem. One of the five, a 24-year-old named Faizan, a resident of KardamPuri, later
succumbed to his injuries. His family said he was misidentified by the police as one of the protesters
when he was coming out of a mosque. Dr. Kishore Kumar, medical director of LokNayak Hospital where
Faizan was admitted, said he had suffered gunshot wounds. The police are said to have registered an FIR
following his death, which the family was denied access to. It is unlawful to keep someone in custody
without a record. Faizan’s family received no documents regarding his detention or release, furthering
police’s culpability. While the higher-ups had initially refused to comment on the incident, Joint
Commissioner Alok Kumar was reported informing BBC that a probe has been launched into the
incident, and that “action will be taken against whoever was responsible”. This was on March 3, 2020. 
Victims recounted their spine-chilling ordeal where the police shoved lathis in their mouths, dragged
them on the roads facedown and were subjected to inhuman assaults.
It begs the question, who do we turn to when the police err us?  

WAR ON MIGRANT WORKERS, MARCH-APRIL , 2020

On 30 March, eight Dalit farmers from one family in Gujarat were brutally beaten by the police for
allegedly gathering together during lockdown. A young teenage boy from the group of eight boys said he
was only getting milk for the hungry family and so ventured out.
On 16 April, Mohammed Rizwan, aged 19, living in a village in Uttar Pradesh, left his home to buy
biscuits. He was detained and beaten by rifle butts and lathis (iron-and-bamboo batons). He was taken
to the hospital where he died two days later. There has been no report of the police officers being
charged. These are but a few of the hundreds of cases of police brutality.

POLICE VIOLENCE DURING LOCKDOWN, APRIL 2020

The national lockdown to counter the impact of Coronavirus pandemic was imposed on March 23, 2020.
The country was reeling under the effect of lockdown and the financially vulnerable were scrambling to
find economic purchase to tide over the next month. Merely a week into the lockdown,
numerous reports of gruesome brutality at the hands of police surfaced. Since the pre-colonial times,
the police’s first act of response is meting out lathi-charge to either punish or disperse crowds.
Countless videos surfaced, showing policemen overturning vegetable carts, at a time when a large share
of the population was going hungry. They were also seen beating up the hungry and homeless migrant
workers who had decided on journeying back to their states on foot.  
Across cases, the majority of victims of police brutality have been the socially and economically
depressed groups, those whose voices are easily suppressed. 

RECOURSE AGAINST MISCONDUCT

Keeping the above in mind, it is imperative to understand the framework for pursuing grievances against
police excesses. Remedies, including compensation, can be sought before the High Courts and the
Supreme Court under the Constitution of India for violations of fundamental rights. However, these
constitutional courts are not widely accessible and usually deal only with egregious cases where the
burden of proof is high.
Relief can also be sought before the National and the State Human Rights Commissions set up under
the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, but their recommendations are not binding on the respective
governments. Criminal complaints can be filed against the concerned officers for offences under the
Indian Penal Code, 1860, but there is no mechanism for an independent investigation. As a result, police
personnel often refuse to register first information reports against their colleagues. The safeguard under
Section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973, is also often misused. This section requires prior
sanction from the concerned government when a public servant, who includes a police officer, is
accused of any offence committed in the discharge of official duty.

Lastly, since police is a state subject under the Constitution, disciplinary proceedings and punishment
for errant police officers such as suspension, removal or deduction of salary is provided under respective
state enactments. However, these proceedings, too, are tainted by the lack of independent and
impartial oversight. Moreover, most state enactments are based on the Police Act of 1861, a Victorian-
era legislation under which disciplining the police was not a priority.

In 2006, India’s top court delivered a historic order instructing the central and state governments to
comply with a set of seven directives to kick-start police reforms. 2 Chief among them was the
appointment of a Police Complaints Authority (PCA) where every citizen could lodge their complaints
against or grievances about police conduct. But a study by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative
(CHRI) discovered that no state has fully complied with the Supreme Court’s order. The governments
have not only either “blatantly rejected, ignored, or diluted significant features of the directives” but
have also disregarded “the Court’s scheme in terms of composition, selection process and functioning of
the PCAs.”The recommendations of these authorities for departmental or criminal action against a
delinquent police officer would be binding, as per the court.

END POLICE BRUTALITY!

Most crimes are petty in nature (small theft, robbery, etc.) and a product of capitalism’s inability to
provide humanity with the basic necessities. To fight against crime, one has to fight against the rampant
poverty and want that constitutes its material base. This cannot be done on the basis of capitalism.

It's not just a few police officers that are rotten, but the entire system. Beyond the police; there are
courts, laws, constitutions and judges, all of whom are unelected, and will protect private property
against workers and the poor. The Indian ruling class want us to believe justice is blind, yet today,
charges of sedition and terrorism are being handed down to students and workers who participated in
the anti-CAA protests, while police officers implicated in murder and riot crimes walk free.

CONCLUSION

Police brutality and torture during the last three decades show that the custodians of law have become
lawbreakers. The lathi-wielding attitude, the brutal abuse, its brutality of power and the use of third
degree methods by the police has become the order of the day. Major techniques of physical torture
adopted by the police were stamping on the bare body with heeled boots, beating with cane on the bare
soles of feet, beating on the spine, beating with rifle butt, inserting live electric wires into the crevices of
the body, burning with lighted cigarettes and candle flames, rubbing of chilli powder in the nose and
rectum.

2
PRAKASH SINGH VS UNION OF INDIA, 2006
In the world’s biggest democracy, it is ironic to see the police force, which is meant to be a law
enforcement agency, become a perpetrator of violence and murder the lives of many with the state as
an accomplice. It is crucial to mention that India has yet to ratify the 1987 United Nations Convention
against Torture. The government’s silence on (the many) custodial deaths is testimony to its thick as
thieves affair with the institutions of justice and law. 

India’s attitude towards police violence has been retributive rather than preventive. Apart from merely
flagging concerns, it is imperative to take policy actions that deconstruct police brutality and curb its
normalisation. There is a growing need for a legitimate authority that will monitor police’s exercise and
enforcement of laws, if the increasing custodial torture, deaths and rapes are anything to go by.

Police excesses are merely symptoms of a much deeper malaise in the administrative structure of the
police force and the inadequate laws that support such a statement.