Bhiwani incident, Sarita case. police high-handedness has been too frequentAt a time when both Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections are nearing and the Congress government in the state is announcing all kinds of benefits, the unrestrained Haryana Police is a recurring nightmare for the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government.The shooting down of an innocent student in Bhiwani yesterday by the police is just another blatant example of the brazen acts of the police force in the state. What made matters worse was the incongruous excuse that the “accidental” firing was because of a bump on the road!Police brutality has been especially frequent this year and in all cases, the innocent have been at the receiving end. The Sarita suicide case is fresh in everyone’s mind. Failing to get justice from the police and the administration, the hapless victim, raped by policemen, committed suicide outside the DGP’s office at the Haryana police headquarters in Panchkula.Just two months back, indiscriminate firing by the police upon a group of protesting guest teachers in Rohtak, the home district of the Chief Minister, led to the death of a woman teacher. The police went on to claim that she had been killed as a result of firing from the rampaging crowd, but the lie was nailed a day later when the post-mortem report proved that she died as a result of a plastic bullet fired by the police. On June 18, the police shot down one Mahendra Singh of Garanpura village in Bhiwani after putting up a naka in Tosham to grab some criminals. They chased and killed the victim in the “encounter”. The probe in this case is still on. In another incident on July 21, the Hisar police, led by SP Ashok Sheoran, shot dead one Sandip, alias Kalia. The SP’s revolver was “lost” during the incident. Curiously, the same revolver was later used to murder encounter specialist from Delhi, ACP Rajbir Yadav.Immediately after the Hooda government came to power in 2005, the brutal police lathicharge on protesting Honda workers in Gurgaon had hit national headlines. This was followed by the police inaction in the Gohana caste clash and the lathicharge on protesting Liberty factory workers in Karnal. Earlier this year, there was the incident of a Yamunanagar nurse tearing off her clothes in protest against police inaction. She alleged she had been raped by some miscreants, but the police were not ready to investigate the case. On the lines of Sarita, a Muslim woman, Shamshida, too, tried to commit suicide in the DGP’s office in Panchkula, but was saved by timely medical help. Not that things were any better during previous governments. During the regime of Om Prakash Chautala, dozens of protesting farmers were shot dead by the same trigger-happy policemen in Kandela. Police firing and killing of farmers and others took place during Bansi Lal and Bhajan Lal’s regimes as well. Surprisingly, despite all such violations and abuse of human rights, the state government has steadfastedly put down all suggestions to set up a human rights commission, with CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda claiming “there was no need for it in the state”. Haryana DGP Ranjiv Dalal was not available for comments, despite several attempts.
