Tags:
Journalism of Courage
All of this week Mumbai has replayed in slow motion the trauma of a year ago. But if the city police were out to offer reassurance through pageantry,the parade of arms and routines they took down Marine Drive on Thursday in fact highlighted whats wrong with the law enforcement establishment in the state. After the terrorist attacks last November,Maharashtras,and more keenly the citys,police have come under the scanner for the command structures and standard operating procedures as they are on paper and as they came into play in the first hours after the terrorists started firing.
Maharashtras police force is always a good story,for the overhang of glamour and rivalry that keeps matters edgy,and the superstar status even junior officers so effortlessly acquire. The personality of the officers dominates all else. Even now,a year on,the police appear unable to move beyond the fissures opened up after the developments of those first hours. It is not just that the self-valorisation we have witnessed this week is out of place; it is also that it refracts the focus to the inter-personnel rivalries that continue to find voice. Hassan Gafoor,the city police commissioner at the time of the attacks who was subsequently rapped by the Ram Pradhan committee and is now one of four officers believed to be in the running for the Maharashtra DGPs post,is battling a controversy over remarks he may or may not have made about the conduct of senior officers that night. Rakesh Maria,who was in charge of the Mumbai police control room then,is currently drawn into a public spat by Vinita Kamte on the circumstances that may have led her husband Ashok Kamte to Cama Hospital,and possibly his death. They are not the only ones,and to hear it from the states own police force is to take away the impression that all that afflicts it cannot just be resolved through new arms and crack commando units.
Additionally,these controversies come amidst the delay by the state in announcing the successor to S.S. Virk,who retired as DGP on October 31. It should not take the first anniversary of 26/11 to flag up the need to fix Maharashtras police force.
