Uniform Stress

Vivek Sharma, a neighbour, was one of the first to discover the three Sawant bodies. The policeman had cared enough for his family to ensure a quick end for them all. 8216;8216;All three 8212; he, his wife Jayshree, 37, and their son 8212; had neat bullet holes on the right side of their temples,8217;8217; he whispers.

If Sawant was known to have been undergoing psychiatric treatment at the Lilavati hospital in Bandra, Namdeo was a tougher nut to crack. Few of his seniors in the CISF bought his plea that he had gone over the edge because he hadn8217;t been granted leave; the record books show, in fact, that he had taken 20 days off in the past three months.

So was it a case of a moody personality battling ambition at odds with his standing in life, or a pure case of psychological or personality disorder, as feared by Dr Yusuf Macheswalla, an honorary associate Professor of Grant Medical College attached to J J Hospital? The jury is still out on that one.

Both the Namdeo and the Sawant cases could relate to stress, but the top brass Mumbai police are not waiting for definitive answers. 8216;8216;We have started several preventive programmes for mental and physical health,8217;8217; says Police Commissioner Ranjit Singh Sharma.

The police have cause enough to worry. An average Mumbai policeman puts in between 12 and 16 hours of work everyday; in emergencies, it could stretch to 60 hours. Even a senior policeman like high-profile 8216;encounter-specialist8217; Pradeep Sharma is 8216;at work8217; between 10 am and midnight everyday. If 30 per cent of the time is spent commuting, the remaining hours are divided between fieldwork and file-pushing. An encounter translates into a sharp rise in blood pressure.

8216;8216;Stress levels are very high during encounters. For the next few days, I inevitably suffer psychological problems,8217;8217; says Sharma. In the wake of the Bombay blasts, Sharma8217;s contemporary Praful Bhosle slept for barely four hours a day when they laid siege on Padga village. Ever since then, the low-profile officer has been suffering serious stress-related acidity problems.

Lower down in the pecking order, an officer or a constable attached to a police station could be living an equally stressful life. A routine duty could be anything from a nakabandi on the streets to a panchnama of a road accident. Night duty could stretch into the daylight hours, escorting the accused to the court and seeking their remand. Is it really all in a day8217;s work?