Cops put brain over brawn, practise cerebral policing8217;

JULY 30: They are policemen who aspire to be doctors. Every year, a few good men from Mumbai police walk the corridors of the university, ...

JULY 30: They are policemen who aspire to be doctors. Every year, a few good men from Mumbai police walk the corridors of the university, trying to strike a balance between academics and practical policing. By enrolling themselves in a P hD course, they go beyond the call of duty to understand the why and how of crime.

The murderer may have been caught, the riot may be over and the floods may have receded, but for these policemen, the case is not over till they are through with analysing it. Armed with books they analyse situations, draw parallels and then work out solutions. Drawing from their experiences during murder investigations, riots, floods, they hope to come up with bigger and better solutions for the entire force. And this while being part of the vicious circle called crime.

Caught in the thick of communal riots more than once, Additional Commissioner of Police Crime R T Rathode made up his mind to do his bit to prevent the carnage. It all started with small, practical schemes to involve the public in maintaining peace and is now culminating in a thesis on 8220;controlling communal riots8221;. In the final stages, the paper draws from Rathode8217;s experiences in Bhiwandi, Kalyan, Ahmednagar and Mumbai.

Explaining his choice of subject, Rathode says: 8220;I have seen so many die, so much arson and so much blood. It didn8217;t take me long to realise that unless the people cooperated, these situations would always be difficult to contain. So I devised simple schemes to involve the people, tried them in areas where I was posted, and I am pleased to say they worked.8221;

While Rathode carried images of the carnage after riots with him, Additional Commissioner of Police North-West region Subhash Avate kept pondering on the prepardeness of agencies to deal with them.

The Mumbai riots followed by the bomb blasts and the Latur earthquake set Avate thinking. Disturbed by the statistics of people who die in disasters, both man-made and natural, and the fact that nobody really cared, Avate decided to do something about it.

His interest in disaster management began with an overseas command course he went for in England. Impressed by the way the West Yokshire Police control rooms functioned, Avate did a detailed paper on the importance of a control centre during crisis. His present thesis on 8220;Incidents of disasters of varying degrees in the metropolitan area and the socio-legal problems involved8221; is an extension of the work he began in the early 90s.

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For senior police inspector P M Deshmane, the compulsions for squeezing in academics into his already busy schedule were very different. The urge to learn made him enroll in the university and today, between attending to panic calls in his bomb squad office, Deshmane has his nose buried in books. From explosives to poisons, brutal murders to human bombs, he is studying it all. Racing to complete the 8220;analytical study of murder cases with special reference to murder by poisoning8221; within three years, Deshmane says he has found the perfect balance between books and bombs.

Deshmane registered himself in Nanded last year. A transfer brought him to Mumbai and he brought his thesis work along. Now, on a typical working day, Deshmane juggles visits to the Mumbai University library with manning the bomb squad.

8220;My present posting is a big help,8221; Deshmane says. 8220;I manage to get a little more time for my thesis than I did before. Also, the subject I am working on helps me with my daily policing. For example, one section of my project deals with human bombs and I have ended up reading so much about explosives subsequently. It helps a lot because I am in the bomb squad and my knowledge about different kinds of explosives has improved so much.8221;

What Deshmane finds most fascinating is that doing his thesis helps him keep in touch with all the laws. With dowry deaths, human bombs and capital punishment on his agenda, Deshmane says he doesn8217;t need refresher courses to keep up with the nuances of the law.

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Cerebral policing seems to work for him and all the others.