Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy: Some Reflections
By K.S Subramanian
30 September, 2012
Countercurrents.org
I had the opportunity to participate in a one-day brainstorming session on “Issues and Concepts to be introduced in Policing in India ” at the SVP National Police Academy , Hyderabad , on 28 August 2012 . The session was attended by many senior serving and retired police officials of the country and some scholars both foreign and Indian. The discussions were useful. I was grateful for the opportunity and enjoyed the hospitality. In my note submitted to the Academy, I made the following points.
Dehumanisation of the guardians of law and order can be disastrous. Reported fake police ‘encounters' in different parts of the country bring a bad image to the police. Wholesale reform of the CJA as well as the police structure is essential to wipe out the practice of ‘encounter' killings by the police. Corruption and inefficiency are the other aspects of the deterioration of the criminal justice system today. The concept of police accountability becomes critical in dealing with diverse elements of the deterioration of policing in the country. The problem is complicated because of the ‘symbiotic relationship' that has developed between ruling politicians and policemen. The role of training in explicating and implementing the concept of police accountability cannot therefore be underestimated.
Accountability means an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions. Accountability in the context of governance means that public officials have an obligation to explain their decisions and actions to citizens. This accountability is achieved through various mechanisms-political, legal and administrative. Setting up effective accountability mechanisms requires a delicate balance between control and initiative drawing on experience elsewhere. In the UK there are 43 police forces with a tripartite system of police accountability. In the US there are 17000 police forces each under the control of their respective elected local government. The complex task of balancing control over the use of police powers and the need for operational autonomy has necessitated the division of police functions into prevention, investigation and service provision. The police perform different functions and the accountability required for each is quite different as brought out in the 2007 report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (SARC). The entire police service would have to be restructured so as to have two separate agencies dealing with ‘investigation' and ‘law and order' with separate accountability mechanisms.
There should be independent District and State Police Complaints Authorities (PCAs) to look into allegations of human rights violations as well as an Independent Inspectorate of Police as in the UK to establish a system of rigorous inspection of police stations and the functioning of police officers. The Inspectorate would also look into recurrent incidents of dubious deaths in ‘encounters' with the police.
It may be recalled in this connection that before independence, the officers of the then Indian Police (IP) were sent for training to the respective provinces that they were posted to. After independence, the IP was renamed the Indian Police Service (IPS) though the change in nomenclature was symbolic. In 1948, Sardar Patel created a centralized institution for IPS training in the Central Police Training College (CPTC) at Mount Abu , a beautiful location in Rajasthan. The Academy was renamed as the Sardar Vallabhbhai National Police Academy and moved to Hyderabad in 1975. The campus is spread over 275 acres and is impressive.
The Academy says that its primary purpose is to train the leaders of the Indian police and to provide them with courage, uprightness, dedication and a strong sense of service to the people in addition to giving them professional knowledge and skills. Integrity of a high order and sensitivity to the aspirations of the people in a fast changing society, respect for human dignity (a very good phrase, this!) and a liberal understanding on law and justice are also being provided. The Academy encourages research and seeks to expand its resource base with tie-ups with other police training institutions in India and abroad. The details of the indoor and outdoor training programmes, available in the NPA documents, are exciting. The Academy conducts need-based in-service training programmes for senior officers of different categories. The Police Training Network (POTNET) has been set up to draw upon and utilise police training resources from across the country. The Academy awards research fellowships on police subjects. It has state of the art infrastructure for training both physical and intellectual.
Though the one-day brainstorming session was productive, many key issues, relevant to police image, remain unaddressed. Some of these are that the negative Charles Napier-created 1861 police organisational structure based on Irish Colonial Paramilitary model is, by and large, still in place. The secrecy and political importance of the intelligence wing; the coercive strength and disposition; high levels of state violence; institutionalisation of an armed wing within the civilian police structure; close identification with propertied interests and so on, also still remain (David Arnold, 1986).
Further, the criminal laws and procedure created by the British in the 1860s and 70s to suppress a colonised people are still in place and no basic change has occurred to make them conform to the provisions of the republican, democratic Constitution of India. A gap between the Constitutional imperatives in the Preamble, Directive Principles of State Policy and Fundamental Rights in the Constitution and the criminal laws and procedure remains. This gap accounts for the enduring unpopularity and negative image of the Indian police despite the technical progress in physical and intellectual training constantly being made. Anandswarup Gupta, a former IP officer, mentions some details in his seminal study (1979).
i) The Indian Penal Code (IPC) begins with a chapter on ‘offences against the state', criminal conspiracy etc ignoring the common preoccupation of the police everywhere with the prevention and detection of offences against person and property. These find a place in the IPC only from section 299 onwards. The offence of ‘sedition' was included in the Code in 1870 freely used today to check freedom of expression guaranteed in the Constitution.
ii) In the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) the chapters on security for keeping the peace and maintenance of public order, including the use of force by the police take precedence over provisions for the investigation and trial of criminal offences.
iii) The Police Act of 1861 prioritises collection of political intelligence relegating prevention and investigation of crime as duties of the police to Section 23. Punitive policing at the cost of the local population and appointment of private persons as ‘special police officers' are provided for. Even the lowest ranking officer can arrest anyone and keep him in custody for at least 24 hours.
Finally, human rights are a big issue today. Police officers at all levels need to be sensitized to human rights. The National Human Rights Commission has stated that 60 per cent of all the arrests made by the police are either unjustified or unnecessary and that 75 per cent of all the complaints of human rights violations received are against the police. Moreover, custodial violence, torture and extrajudicial executions are on the rise. One report says that 1.8 million people are being tortured in police custody every year. India is yet to ratify the UN Convention against Torture.
SVP NPA would be well advised to make efforts to develop training programmes to discuss these issues and come up with concrete recommendations to improve police image in India today.
(The author was a member of the IPS from 1963 to 1997. He is Senior Fellow of the Council for Social Development, New Delhi and has authored the book “Political Violence and the Police in India ”, 2007, Sage Publications, New Delhi ).
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