Police-patels ready for the beat

8220;Had the system been in force, the police would have been alerted in time and the criminals arrested8221;, he says with a confidence born of averting house-breaks and keeping night-long vigils.

Adds Amirsinh Dalpatsinh Bodana, another former police-patel from Kathoni village, Sankheda taluka, 8220;Our reports had legal validity. So people thought twice about taking the law into their own hands. This helped curb crime and maintain law and order8221;.

Khodabhai and Bodana are just two of the several thousand police-patels who converged on the city last month to take out a massive rally on January 16. They are demanding the revival of the police-patel system, introduced more than 100 years ago by the British under the Bombay Village Police Act 1867 to maintain order in far-flung villages and collect revenue without deploying additional personnel.

Ironically, the police-patels themselves are responsible 8212; at least in part 8212; for the phase-out initiated in 1989. During British times, police-patels were allotted watan property instead of being paid salaries. This gave way to annual remunerations between Rs 160 and Rs 320 in 1963. In 1984, the police-patels moved court, demanding salaries and status on par with Class III or IV staff.

But before the court verdict 8212; describing the amount as 8220;measly8221; 8212; arrived in 1996, the system had been phased out, except in the Dangs, whose inhospitable terrain and remote villages earned it a special status.

8220;The system needs to be revived in view of the spurt in crime in rural areas, which are often inaccessible8221;, says former police-patel Gorabhai Pratapbhai Pargi of Simalia village, Santrampur taluka, Dahod.

Former police-patels 8212; the force had 18,000 personnel in 22,000 villages when it was discontinued in 1989 8212; now plan to stage rallies in Gandhinagar and other places to intensify their demand for a resurrection of the system.

Indication that the going is likely to be tough comes from Additional Chief Secretary Home V V Ramasubbarao, who says the police now have enough infrastructure to reach even the remotest villages, which wasn8217;t the case during British times.

But, as the Ootia case shows, the issue is not so much of infrastructure as of communication between the police and the public. District Superintendent of Police Rural Shamsher Singh, for once, agrees that the police-patels definitely served a purpose, especially in the tribal areas, where villages are separated by thick jungles and hilly terrain.

8220;They were just like the police-friends8217; appointed in some districts of Tamil Nadu to check Naxalism or the police-mitra8217;, formed in Delhi to curb property offences8221;, Singh says. 8220;Police-patels can be very helpful in solving cases because of their knowledge of the people and terrain8221;.

Special Inspector-General of Police Vadodara Range D D Tuteja, too, believes the police-patel was an useful institution. 8220;They would know things directly because they were the locals8221;, he says. Encouragement indeed for the agitating former police-patels.