Opinion: Caste, Crime And Khakee

"Not the police, only the Army can control this". "Sometimes I feel India needs Martial Law" - familiar sentiments. The anger may even be valid at times.

Be it communal violence, ethnic clashes, caste tensions, even heinous gender-related crimes, the local administration and the local police often struggle while handling the situation. Even in individual cases, we hear of shoddy investigations, deliberate botch-ups, even outright intimidation, custodial torture, and red tape to favour the privileged.

A key reason, we often hear, are inherent biases - communal, caste, regional, or gender-related - ingrained in members of our police forces and administrative officialdom at every level. There is even a vast amount of anecdotal evidence pointing towards this, along with studies and reports confirming this.

The stated "reason" for this bias is well known - that our police personnel and our state and central administration officials are part of the same society, and so, naturally, they bring their socially learnt biases to their jobs as well, and it reflects in their performance.

But then, what about the Army? Aren't our jawans and officers also from the exact same social milieus? From the same villages, towns and cities? In fact, don't many of us know of families that have members in both the police and the Army? So why do cops retain their caste bias while our army jawans forget about them? What is different?

What changes when an upper caste youth joins the army versus his brother joining the police? Raised in the same family, same town, educated at the same school, they could both carry the privileged upper caste chip on their shoulders, and let it reflect in their jobs. But that doesn't happen. If there is any prejudice that the upper caste army jawan may have grown up with, he leaves them at home. Yet his brother, the upper caste cop, lets his acquired prejudice reflect in his police work, evidence suggests.

Why is that? Clearly because the army demands that of its jawans and officers. A Brahmin soldier from Uttar Pradesh is expected to take orders from a tribal officer from Assam, no questions asked. It has been a core value of the Indian Army from its very inception. It's central to the army's discipline, it's central to the army's effectiveness in times of conflict, it's central to the army's role in protecting the nation's borders, even on occasion, our internal security. An army teeming with communal or caste or regional differences and biases would be a disaster. We all know that.

So, why can't we, why don't we, demand and expect the same from our country's police forces? Or even our nation's bureaucracy? Why are we ok with repeated cases of custodial torture, even custodial killings in our police stations, which reek of caste discrimination? Why are we ok with the systemic exploitation and targeting of India's so-called 'criminal' castes and tribes by the police in various parts of the country?

One reason why we see repeated cases of the most heinous caste violence is certainly the fact that the perpetrators believe they can get away. They often believe that the police and government officials will look away, or favor them if they are ever caught. They don't fear the law, there is no deterring factor.

We have seen some brutal caste crimes just in the last few days.

In Uttar Pradesh's Kaushambi on August 25, a 14-year-old boy allegedly killed his 15-year-old sister with an axe because she spoke to a Dalit youth on the phone. He then surrendered to the police. The girl's parents and older brother were also allegedly involved in the killing.

In Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, on August 27, an 18-year-old Dalit teen was beaten to death and his mother stripped naked by a mob over a sexual harassment case filed by his sister in 2019.

In Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, four Dalit youth were hung upside down, beaten up, urinated upon, and made to lick shoes that had been spat upon, merely on suspicion the theft of goats and pigeons.

What gives the perpetrators the impunity to commit such crimes? Their misplaced sense of caste superiority certainly plays a part. They believe they are entitled to strip, beat, kill, sexually violate, urinate upon, and abuse members of the less privileged castes. But the lack of deterrence, alongside the subtle (and often unsubtle) collusion of the police, the administrative machinery, and the justice system, is a huge factor.

Consider this statistic - in 2020, 50,291 cases were registered for crimes against Scheduled Castes (SCs). But just 216 were convicted and no less than 3,192 were acquitted. These numbers are just so lopsided and appalling. A conviction rate of just 4.9 per cent for the entire country. That is where the impunity to commit caste-related crimes originates.

In October 2021, a Supreme Court bench comprising DY Chandrachud (then not yet India's Chief Justice) and BV Nagarathna highlighted exactly this. While ruling against a bail order granted by the Punjab and Haryana High Court under the SC/ST Act, they observed: "Due to the fear of retribution from upper caste groups... or police apathy, many SC/ST victims do not register complaints, and when they do, police officials are reluctant to register complaints or do not record allegations accurately..."

They also said: "...low conviction rates under the SC/ST Act... is not due to false cases or misuse of the Act. On the contrary, many acquittals are a result of improper investigation and prosecution of crime, leading to insufficient evidence."

It is also well-documented that the police are frequently guilty of caste and communal violence. In June 2023, in Bikaner district, Rajasthan, a 20-year-old Dalit woman was gang-raped and murdered, allegedly by three upper caste men and two policemen. But only one of the cops has been arrested, and that too on charges of helping the prime accused to flee. The other cop has so far only been suspended.

Then again, in February 2020, during the violence in northeast Delhi, a viral video showed a group of Muslim men being assaulted by police personnel, and forced to sing the National Anthem. One of them, 23-year-old Faizan, died four days later. Over three years later, despite two camera angles available, voice samples, and police duty rosters at their disposal, the Delhi Police and Crime Branch have failed to even identify those involved in the crime, let alone prosecute any policeman.

In both these cases, could it be argued that the police is going soft on its own? If so, what is the message being sent down? That in cases of police excesses and policemen involved in extreme caste and communal violence, even if they commit crimes as heinous as rape or murder, their bosses and the criminal justice 'system' may still look away.

To my mind, the solution can't be - "Call the Army". As a truly democratic country, we owe it to our citizens to have a police force that is free of every kind of bias, and is part of the solution and not the problem. There can be no excuses.

(Rohit Khanna is a journalist, commentator and video storyteller. He has been Managing Editor at The Quint, Executive Producer of Investigations & Special Projects at CNN-IBN, and is a 2-time Ramnath Goenka award winner)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.