II. The Deteriorating State of the Indian Police

The Indian police face an unprecedented level of public distrust. The media derides them as professionally incompetent and criminally negligent. Much of the public fears them as the strong arm of corrupt politicians.[1]

These characterizations are unduly monolithic considering the diversity of India’s 1.43 million police.[2] The Indian Constitution authorizes each of the 28 states to operate its own police service, which includes an armed reserve and civil police.[3] The central government operates civil police services in each of the seven union territories and in the capital, Delhi, in addition to various armed police forces that state governments may request for extraordinary law and order problems.[4] Lacking concurrent jurisdiction, these state and central police services operate independently of one another.[5] 

While police administration is decentralized, the central government wields significant influence over state police services. Each state police service draws senior police from the Indian Police Service (IPS), an elite police cadre recruited and trained by the central government.[6] While law and order is primarily a state concern, the principal laws covering police work were enacted by the central government and are national in scope: the Indian Penal Code defines major criminal offenses and the Criminal Procedure Code and Evidence Act regulate police behavior and codify constitutional protections for criminal suspects. Central government laws such as the Prevention of Atrocities Against Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes Act and Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act give police additional duties and define special criminal offenses.[7]

Colonial Legacies and the Failure to Modernize

The Indian police have long had a strained relationship with the public. India’s state and central police services were organized based on the Police Act of 1861, a law drafted in the wake of the 1857 uprising against British rule that remains in force in the union territories and is the basis for most state police laws. Designed to secure British imperial interests, the Indian police were controlled by civilian administrators accountable to the British government, rather than the local population.[8]

Despite this aspect of civilian control, the Indian police in the colonial era were paramilitary in operation. Geared toward quelling anti-British “disturbances” and general lawlessness rather than preventing and investigating particular crimes, the police developed large armed constabulary forces.[9] A military ethos and distrust of the “native” population meant that the constabulary, the lowest rank comprising at least 80 percent of the police and staffed with Indians, was entrusted with only menial tasks and charged with instilling fear in the public, rather than seeking its cooperation.[10] Scholar Arvind Verma writes:

[S]haped as an instrument of the Raj, [i]t was these police who would baton charge Gandhi’s peaceful followers or shoot to death young people raising Indian flags.[11]

To prevent police from sympathizing with the local population’s problems and the independence movement, the police were structurally sequestered. Senior police, drawn from the elite cadre that would later become the Indian Police Service but initially limited to non-Indians, were deployed to areas with which they had no community ties or experience. Low-ranking police such as constables were physically secluded from the local population, residing in police barracks and working from the police station rather than venturing into villages to address crime complaints or render aid.[12]

India retained the Police Act of 1861 after it gained independence from British rule in 1947, along with many of the structural characteristics described.[13] In the decades that followed, the Indian police remained a force deployed to maintain law and order and support the state, and failed to develop the public service orientation of modern policing.[14] The central and state governments developed large armed police battalions in response to growing levels of social violence, and failed in large part to devote resources to investigative units and crime prevention strategies.[15]

The post-independence Indian police have earned a reputation for brutality in the service of politicians and widespread corruption. In the 1970s, police harassed, beat, and killed resistors during Indira Gandhi’s programs of mass forced sterilization and “slum clearance.”[16] During the Emergency Period of 1975 to 1977, police harassed and extorted members of the general population under the guise of the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, and arbitrarily detained political opponents of Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party.[17]

Communal violence in the following decades featured politically motivated failure to protect religious minorities and police collusion. This was particularly notable during the 1984 mob attacks on Sikhs in Delhi and attacks on Muslims in Mumbai in 1993 and in Gujarat in 2002.[18]

This history of alienation from, and violence against, the Indian public has rendered the police a widely despised group, regarded by the public as corrupt, inept, and ineffective.[19] Yet the police are increasingly tasked with battling India’s myriad public safety problems: armed militancy, terrorism, entrenched gender-based, caste and communal violence, and escalating levels of organized crime, white collar crime, and cyber crime.

A Dangerous State of Disrepair

The police are unequal to these tasks due to a dearth of trained personnel and necessary equipment. Poor living and working conditions not only demoralize police, they result in delays or failures of officers to assist crime victims and investigate crimes. 

Poor Infrastructure

The deteriorating state of the police is most visible at police stations.[20] Human Rights Watch researchers visited numerous decaying police stations built before independence and stocked with antiquated equipment. Many lacked basic equipment needed for investigating crimes, preserving evidence, and keeping minimally adequate records.

In rural areas, some police stations lacked electricity. In a station in Uttar Pradesh, police set up desks in the courtyard because power outages render their offices hot and dark. While rural India suffers from inadequate power supply, police stations could be provided with generators and power back-ups.

At a station in Himachal Pradesh, police struggled for several minutes to unclasp and close a pair of rusted, decades-old handcuffs. Some police are equipped with First World War-era rifles and inadequate bullet-proof vests, a deadly combination highlighted by the death of sixteen police during the first seven hours of the November 2008 Mumbai shooting rampage by militants armed with Ak-47s.[21] Many police are unprepared to face or use lethal force due to poor equipment and lack of weapons training. “A constable will fire at best ten rounds in the entire training period,” said Ajai Sahni of the Institute for Conflict Management, a New Delhi think tank that works on security issues. “When a fellow actually has to fire, he doesn’t aim properly.”[22]

Junior officers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that they have no discretion to use funds for infrastructure improvements. Stations Human Rights Watch visited ordinarily had only one phone line and two handsets, and police said they routinely use their personal mobile phones to communicate with each other.

“Police stations don’t get enough money to function as they’re expected to function,” said a member of Poverty Action Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a development project, who has visited dozens of stations in Rajasthan. “Often the money literally doesn’t cover the stationery.”[23]

Police said that limited resources prevented them from responding promptly to calls for help and visiting crime scenes, setting up patrols, and following up on investigation leads.[24] Nationwide, there is an average of about seven police vehicles for every 100 police.[25] In urban areas, the scarcity of police vehicles means police use their own motorcycles.[26] Many police officers we interviewed said the fuel allowance they received covered only a small fraction of the cost they incurred. Some police in rural areas said that they were often expected to take public transportation to reach remote areas, leading to delays in police response.

Andersenpet police station in Kolar, Karnataka, a high-crime area with gangs feuding over local gold deposits, is equipped with only one jeep. The night Human Rights Watch visited the station, the station house officer, or SHO, was out with the jeep when a stream of people injured in a nearby street fight poured into the police station. One man arrived bleeding, having been beaten on his head with a stick. With no police vehicles available, a constable was deputed to flag down an auto-rickshaw (motorcycle taxi) and escort the injured man to the hospital. Soon after, four other wounded men staggered in one-by-one. The police made no attempt to discover where the fight was occurring or to try and stop it. Running out of personnel to escort the injured to the hospital, the head constable merely stopped reluctant auto drivers and put the injured into their cars.

The head constable explained, “These types of fights are common here... We don’t need to attend to them.” He added that he had no alternative, “The jeep is with the SHO. There are only two motorbikes. We don’t have anything available right now.”[27]

Senior police acknowledge that inadequate equipment and supplies breed rampant petty corruption, including demands for payment in exchange for assistance to crime victims. A police officer in charge of a Bangalore police station described a case in which parents told police their daughter had been kidnapped from the area:

If the family were to wait for the police to respond, it would be days before the expense amount [was authorized] and the policeman able to reach the spot using public transport. So, if the father wants results, he will offer to provide transport.”[28]

Another police officer told Human Rights Watch:

The police station is allotted stationery, which is never enough. We even have to buy paper to write the FIRs. Every week, we are sending at least 8 or 10 statements to a number of officers so we have to make multiple copies. How do we fund this? With our salaries? But if we ask the victim to supply the paper, we are accused of corruption.[29]

The central government has made modernization grants to state police services since the 1960s. But many police told Human Rights Watch that they lacked computers, internet connections, and other technological equipment. A constable at the women’s police station in Lucknow noted that while a computer had been allocated to the station, the station house officer had taken it home. Moreover, state governments sometimes fail to spend the modernization grant money they receive, or fail to use the funds for long-term development.[30] Due to poor planning, sometimes police receive new equipment, but not the funding to maintain it or train officers to use it.[31]

Many police officers complain that computers are of little use in the absence of searchable databases and specialized software.[32] India lacks a functional nationwide fingerprint database,[33] and most states and metropolitan areas have not developed criminal history databases accessible to investigating officers. Case diaries and police registers are usually recorded in notebooks or loose leaf paper which are then tied with string and stored in corners of the station or atop tall cabinets.

Telecommunications, transport and data processing equipment—provision of which is inadequate at many Indian police stations—are all critical to effective police work. As noted, the lack of available vehicles prevents police from promptly following up on leads that swiftly turn cold. Information-sharing, through Internet technology and mobile phones, is crucial to coordinating the crime investigation and crime prevention efforts of state and city police forces, particularly when suspects flee the area to escape arrest. On a local level, information-sharing is critical because violent demonstrations and local disputes can quickly escalate. Former senior police officer and member of the National Human Rights Commission K.N. Gupta explains:

Law and order in the present day is much like a conflagration that starts with a spark. The cause of trouble is often obscure but the spread is rapid and the effect is widespread. At the police station level, the station House Officer perceives local incidents but not their wider repercussions. At district or higher levels, senior officers perceive the repercussions but not the causes... Without a communication network linking all levels, there can obviously be no upward flow of information and intelligence or downward control and direction of action... [This] is the root-cause of failure of police operations.[34]

Moreover, the lack of basic crime investigation equipment, discussed in greater detail in Chapter III of this report, means evidence is likely to be contaminated or otherwise compromised, rendering it of little or no use in supporting prosecutions or becoming the basis for acquittals.[35] While it is modern police practice to keep evidence in sealed containers with labels indicating chain of custody, at stations Human Rights Watch visited in Himachal Pradesh, police stored evidence in loosely tied cotton sheets. In Bangalore, Inspector S. Badrinath said that since his police station had only a single investigation kit, with one body bag, they did not use it.[36] A barracks in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, doubles as an evidence storage room. Investigating officers complain that they lack interrogation rooms or offices in which to write reports.

The inadequacy or absence of such basic equipment makes it all the more likely that police will seek coerced and false confessions and, in the worst cases, secure “justice” by extrajudicially killing criminal suspects, issues discussed in Chapter III.

Older stations appear structured to physically intimidate the public, and even to deter approach. Some stations Human Rights Watch visited featured reporting desks rising above eye level, so that a visitor making a complaint of crime would be unable to view what a police official wrote down. In many rural police stations, witnesses or complainants, particularly the poor or Dalits, are expected to sit on the floor or stand while addressing policemen. The reporting room at the Lucknow women’s police station, where police ordinarily direct victims of rape and domestic violence, was cramped with more than half a dozen police, affording no privacy for the taking of a complaint.

Inefficient Deployment of Personnel

The Indian police suffer from a shortage of personnel. According to the most recently available information, there is a national average of one civil police officer for every 1,037 residents, far below Asia’s regional average of one police officer for 558 people and the global average of one for every 333 people.[37] More than 13 percent of civil police positions are vacant nationwide, but the actual deficit of staff is greater because allocations are based on outdated population figures and suppressed crime registration.[38]

An assistant sub-inspector in Karnataka said that staff shortages are worse in rural areas because police testifying in court proceedings in remote areas are absent for entire days: “Effectively we get five or six persons each shift. Yet, each police station will cover 50 or 60 villages. It is difficult for us to even reach the [crime] scene on time.”[39]

The personnel shortage means heavy workloads, long working hours, often without overtime being paid, and officers on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Police say that the resulting stress and frustrations contribute to low morale and pressures to find investigative “short-cuts,” particularly since officers designated for crime prevention and crime investigation work are often diverted to immediate-day-to-day duties such as patrolling demonstrations and religious processions.[40]

The personnel shortage is compounded by misuse of police time. For instance, many police told Human Rights Watch that they spent whole days escorting VIPs visiting their cities or villages. While some individuals who request police escort face serious threats—many Indian politicians have been assassinated—S.R. Darapuri, a former inspector general of police in Uttar Pradesh, said that local politicians, business and entertainment figures often seek police “VIP” escorts as a “status symbol.”[41] In 2009, an estimated 45,900 police nationwide were deployed to protect 13,300 VIPs, with one-fourth of the Delhi police assigned to escort duty and an average of 34 Delhi police assigned to each protected individual.[42] An assistant superintendent of police in Himachal Pradesh who did not wish to be named said, “Each officer in a month will have to do it four or five times, for a full day. I walk alongside them. They [politicians] need to do that to show their control over police.”[43]

Another problem is that low-ranking police are assigned to non-skilled tasks, including serving as orderlies for senior police. Human Rights Watch repeatedly witnessed constables being used as tea servers and personal assistants. While the practice is declining, Human Rights Watch also heard reports of constables assigned as personal servants to the households of senior police. Constables fill data entry and unskilled positions, which in other countries are typically staffed by civilians.[44] An officer in charge of a police station in Bangalore said that his newly trained constables are often well-educated, but face considerable frustration in their jobs. “Their dreams, imagination are totally different from the work,” he said, adding that many left the police for more challenging jobs in the private sector.[45]

Although they make up 85 percent of the Indian police force, constables and head constables have limited qualifications, training and authority.[46] Government commissions have long-recommended transforming constables from “mere automatons, recruited, trained and developed mostly to perform duties of a mechanical character,” to skilled workers with the training necessary to undertake crime investigation and prevention work.[47]

Constables are permitted to assist in crime investigations, but are not trained to do so and have a limited role. While constables designated as munshis are authorized to record complaints in a daily diary, they are not authorized to register First Information Reports and initiate the investigation process. Because junior-ranking officers authorized to lead investigations and register FIRs are overburdened, many crimes go unregistered or poorly investigated. A senior police official in Karnataka explained, “The constable has no power and yet, they form the bulk of the police force.... If you go to complain of a crime, they’ll say come back when the inspector is here.”[48]

At the same time, constables are sometimes the “first responders” to crime scenes, either because they are on beat patrol or because higher-ranking officers are unavailable. First responders should provide emergency assistance to the injured and secure the crime scene by limiting access of bystanders, identifying witnesses, and protecting the evidence–the latter actions are crucial to the success of the entire investigation.[49] But constables are not trained to perform such tasks.[50]

Police at the next rank level—assistant sub-inspectors and sub-inspectors—bear the majority of the burden of investigating common crimes such as theft, and, in smaller stations, murder and rape cases. Yet, like constables, they spend the majority of their time on bandobast duties: patrolling religious processions, political demonstrations and commercial areas. Sub-inspector Jagmohan Prasad, Gonda district, Uttar Pradesh, explained:

Here we do everything in one day: law enforcement, attending to VIPs and all that during the day. Then patrolling at night. In between, we have to write our reports, do investigation. We sleep at about 4 a.m. And have to be back on the job by 9 a.m.[51]

Police are required to be available for work 24 hours a day, seven days a week—a grueling reality for constables and other low-ranking officers. As government employees, police are allowed paid leave. However, in practice, the police chief or district officer may issue a standing order to recall police on vacation or state that no leave is permitted for a certain period or when there are exigencies or staff shortages. Superior officers often deny leave because of staff shortages—several police officers told us that they had to beg for a leave of absence when there was a family need, particularly the marriage of children or siblings.

Many police officers said they work an average of 12 to 16 hours a day, with no weekly or monthly days off.[52] An assistant sub-inspector in Bangalore said that he worked a minimum of 15 to 16 hours every day:

Most of our duty is bandobast because this is a communally tense area. We don’t get a chance to investigate after registering complaints. We register 10 to 15 complaints a day. So many cases are pending, but we don’t have time to follow up. Then our increment [pay] is cut as punishment...We work so hard, and yet, because we can’t do enough, we are punished. Our officers have to realize that there is a limit to what we can do.[53]

Police do not receive overtime pay because the shift system exists only in theory, a fact that the Director-General of Police in Uttar Pradesh boasted of: “If you brought a US policeman here he’d commit suicide within one day. [Here], you are literally thrown against the wall. We don’t have a shift of 8 to 10 hours, it is the system we have: we work 24 hours a day.”[54] 

Many police said that their long working hours create stress and frustrations, which they say results in abuses against the public. An inspector in charge of a police station in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, said:

With all the mental stress, the 24-hour law and order duty, the political pressure, a person may turn to violence. How much can a person take?...We have to keep watch on an accused person, their human rights, but what about us? Living like this 24 hours. We are not claiming that our power makes us born to work all the times. Sometimes we beat or detain illegally, because our working conditions, our facilities are bad. So we are contributing to creating criminals, militants.[55]

Gangaram Azad, a sub-inspector who heads a rural police station in Uttar Pradesh state explained:

We have no time to think, no time to sleep. I tell my men that a victim will only come to the police station because we can give him justice, so we should not beat him with a stick. But often the men are tired and irritable and mistakes take place.[56]

Some senior police officers deny that excessive work burdens require increasing the number of intermediate positions, or changing the role of constables. But junior-ranking officers complained that many of their senior officers have never experienced the life and work of a constable or low-level officer.[57] At least a third of senior police officers are recruited directly into high-ranking positions from the Indian Police Service. Such officers are placed in regions with which they often have no prior experience to limit the possibility of bias or entanglement in local politics. However, that unfamiliarity can limit their understanding of the problems subordinate officers encounter when dealing with, for instance, communal violence and land disputes.[58]

While state promotion schemes vary, with some affording constables the opportunity to test into the next rank after serving for a number of years, Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of constables who confirmed the “once a constable always a constable” adage. Constables who passed exams report being denied promotions because there are no positions available. The problem is worse for women, who compete for a limited number of positions specifically designated for women.[59]

One reason for the limited opportunity for promotion is the system of direct recruitment to junior- and senior-ranking positions, a vestige of the colonial model. A major government study of the police, the National Police Commission, decried the model in 1979:

With the system of direct recruitment at the level of Sub-Inspector and the relatively meagre number of Sub-Inspectors’ posts compared to the vast numbers of the constabulary, a large majority of the Constables retire as Constables without even one rank promotion in [their] entire career. No system can remain healthy if such a large chunk of its personnel vegetate and waste out after working for nearly 30 years in the same rank at which they entered the system.[60]

Despite repeated calls for reform, limited prospects for promotion continue to demoralize police and make them less motivated to improve their performance.[61] A sub-inspector in Bangalore explained, “Sometimes, for 20, 25 years, the person has the same job. It leads to bad attitude because there are no rewards or compensations to try and do things better.”[62]

Inadequate Training of Personnel

Police performance is severely undercut by the inadequacy of training. For non-IPS officers, pre-induction trainings of six to nine months are military in style and dominated by physical fitness: “foot drills,” “platoon drill,” and ceremonial parades.[63] A Varanasi sub-inspector told us:

My training was very short. Within one year, we were exposed to [investigation techniques] two or three times. We are being “left right, left right” all the time, physical. The most important work of an SI is investigating, but this was the most neglected part.[64]

Even with this orientation, practical skills such as shooting are under-taught. According to a 2002 Bureau of Police Research and Development study, in many states, “[r]ifle training is given with only one field firing practice.”[65]

While academy curriculums include a variety of classroom lectures, in reality many police, especially constables, begin service uninformed about the law and their legal duties.[66] Many crime victims report that police do not know what provisions to register their cases under, and many police Human Rights Watch interviewed appeared unfamiliar with special protective laws like the Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act.[67]

Outdated training leaves police unprepared to tackle crimes committed with computers and mobile phones. In tech-capital Bangalore, Inspector Badrinath described having to phone civilian friends to consult on a cyber-crime case, “We need to learn how these problems can be solved. For this, we need new skills.”[68]

Police training is severely underfunded. In 2007, only 1.2 percent of state expenditures on police went toward police training.[69] Many police academies lack basic facilities like blackboards and overhead projectors, and course materials are outdated.[70]

“Training is poor quality because instructors are poor,” said Sanker Sen, former head of the National Police Academy.[71] Academy instructor positions are low-paid and attract police officers with no prior teaching experience or knowledge of the subject they are supposed to teach. Many positions are filled by officers who are given the posting as punishment, and spend much of their time trying to get a transfer as soon as possible.[72] According to the National Police Academy Journal:

[T]he adverse “imprints” that are created in [new recruits’] minds during the training period due to the lethargic, indifferent and overbearing attitude of some training instructors reappear in the form of unhealthy traits such as lack of integrity, corruption, etc. during their active service.[73]

In parts of India, in-service training is extremely infrequent. Many constables told Human Rights Watch they have not been trained since their induction, while others describe attending two or three trainings over the course of decades-long careers.[74] One station house officer said he could not spare personnel to attend trainings held hours away, at district headquarters. But several officers say in-service training is necessary. An inspector in Bangalore said: “We have to adjust to a modernizing world. But we are not given new skills. There should be training every six months: short-term courses that will freshen the team. But that is not given properly.”[75]

Even when police are promoted to positions requiring a different skill set, they may not receive additional training. While some police manuals require training upon promotion, according to Inspector General of Karnataka Police, Kamal Pant, police often have to rely on what they learned pre-induction, “The head constable is now an SHO. He won’t remember what was taught 15 or 20 years ago.”[76]

Police Living Conditions

Low-ranking police often live in barracks or family quarters at or near the police station. Police may receive a housing allowance for private accommodation which, in urban areas, is as little as a fourth of the cost of actual housing. Police interviewed in Bangalore said that the only private housing they could afford required them to commute one to three hours by bus to the police station. Constable S.R. Rajanna explained, “We don’t have our own vehicle and have to depend on public transport which is often unreliable. If it is late at night, we have a lot of trouble reaching home.”[77]

Housing shortages lead some police to live in barracks hours away from the villages in which their families reside. A constable in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, said, “I want to live with my family but I can’t because I’m in the barracks. I can’t get family quarters and I can’t afford private quarters. We are doing our work, but mentally....  We have mental unrest regarding our families.”[78]

Many police told Human Rights Watch that they feel frustrated when they are denied leave to see families living far from their police stations. A police officer in Uttar Pradesh said, “There is always worry and demands because the family is far away. It can create a lot of stress and make people angry. That anger can come out badly sometimes.”[79]

Some police barracks Human Rights Watch researchers visited had deteriorating walls and some were exposed to the open air. The barracks were typically shared by 12 to 16 constables and head constables and were cramped with trunks, bicycles and equipment—they had fewer beds than assigned personnel. At a Varanasi police station, four constables shared a single bed in a small room. Many police say they lack access to a kitchen and a living area for recreation. An Uttar Pradesh constable told Human Rights Watch, “There is one hand pump. The toilets are broken. Authorities demand that we are on duty 24 hours, but don’t take [care] even of the most basic facilities.”[80]

Many police living in barracks describe getting little sleep. Asked how much sleep he usually received, a constable living in barracks in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, said, “Sometimes I get one hour. Last night I returned from duty at 5 a.m. and slept two or three hours...It’s not quality rest time because someone else enters, someone’s talking. That’s not restful.”[81]

A constable in Uttar Pradesh said: “On average we get about four or five hours of sleep. Sometimes, we are so tired, we do doze off while on duty. And if the authorities or the media catch us, it means immediate suspension or a cut in salary.”[82]

Another Uttar Pradesh constable described feeling “suffocated” by his living conditions:

We are being exploited. I have to work for 24 hours but I get the wage of a chaprasi [messenger]. I don’t get any leave. My meals are unhealthy and below caloric value. There is no fixed time for meals, sometimes we just get [meals] at nine, sometimes at 12. It’s just like I’m a prisoner. We are suffocating here. I feel like it’s still the British Empire. There’s no medical facilities, no toilet. The funds allocated by the government to constables are taken away by the superiors. You don’t understand the trauma of being here....I took three days’ medical leave and had 25 days’ salary deducted.[83]

Poor work and living conditions never justify violations of human rights, but understanding and addressing these issues is critical to curtailing police abuses.

Political Interference and Stalled Efforts at Reform

Comprehensive reform of the Indian police force has been on the national agenda for more than 30 years. In the late 1970s, senior police officers began agitating for reform upon finding their professional credibility eroded by the politically motivated police brutality of the Emergency Period. The National Police Commission, established during the Janata Party’s post-Emergency government, studied comprehensive reform but the government did not implement its major recommendations.[84]

Since the late 1970s, senior police officers have remained at the mercies of state and local politicians who, acting on ambiguously worded supervisory authority in the Police Act of 1861, intervene in everyday police operations: officers are frequently told to drop investigations against people with political connections and sometimes told to harass or file false charges against political opponents.[85] Refusal means transfer to remote areas, and with it the loss of prestige and the hardship of removing children from good city schools.[86]

Senior police officers have also lost the ability to discipline their ranks as politicians patronize junior-ranking police, intervening in recruitment, appointment and promotions.[87] Former Inspector General of Police S.R. Darapuri said:

There is a flaw in the recruitment process itself. Selection is very much biased and based on recommendations or corruption. Deserving candidates rarely get into the service. And therefore insubordination is a big problem in the force. Seniors are not able to control their juniors because these people have political connections.”[88]

A superintendent of police in Uttar Pradesh explained the pervasiveness of the system of political patronage:

It has become obvious that the police cannot be neutral. Either you comply with every order from the political masters, or you have some strong backing of a leader who protects you. That is how policing is done here.[89]

To combat political interference, and for their own financial gain, senior police court politicians. Scholar David H. Bayley described the evolving situation in 1983:

[T]he intrusion of politics in matters of police management leads to solicitation of further political interference.... [I]n confrontations with politicians, individual self-interest will rarely be put aside. Some few are always prepared to seize what they perceive as a main chance to win influential political friends. This engenders defensive lobbying in others and, for most, calculated passivity as they try to remain as inconspicuous as possible.[90]

This characterization is consistent with the accounts of current and former senior police Human Rights Watch interviewed. At present, many officers say, corruption is pervasive among the senior and junior ranks.[91] Police allegedly buy and sell appointments to positions in the areas most lucrative for extorting money from local businesses and embezzling police funds. Senior police are routinely accused of maintaining lavish lifestyles as “official expenses” as their political allies look the other way.[92]

The failure of senior police to collectively relinquish the benefits of political patronage, along with the desire of state and central government political leaders to keep police officers at their “beck and call,” continues to doom police reform efforts.[93] In 2006, the Supreme Court issued Prakash Singh and Others v. Union of India and Others, a landmark decision directing the central and state governments to enact new police laws. Noting the longstanding history of police reform commissions and the “total uncertainty” regarding when the central and state government would finally act, the Court issued six binding directives to the state governments.

Most of the Court’s instructions are designed to limit the ability of state politicians to make politically motivated decisions regarding police operations and appointment, dismissal and transfer of senior and junior-ranking police officers.[94] The Court also mandated that police officers responsible for law and order duties not engage in crime investigation, and vice versa, a basic specialization present in most modern police services. In a gesture toward proponents of police accountability, the Court mandated establishment of an independent Police Complaints Authorities to adjudicate the public’s complaints of police misconduct, with authority to make binding recommendations.[95]

Prakash Singh’s promise of comprehensive reform remains unrealized and the momentum it created is dissipating. As of April 2009, only 12 states had passed laws claiming to implement all of the Court’s directives, but the Court had not initiated contempt proceedings against the non-compliant states.[96] Instead, in what critics deem a dangerous departure from the sense of urgency articulated in Prakash Singh, in April 2008 the Court established a monitoring committee to review states’ compliance.[97] The committee’s two reports to the Court are unavailable to even the petitioners, stymieing civil society’s ability to voice informed concern over the continued delays. The lack of transparency makes it unclear whether the committee has established a timetable or made minimum demands on non-compliant states. According to the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, even new state laws contain provisions incongruent with the Court’s directives.[98] Nevertheless, the committee has indicated it will not assess those laws until it finishes reviewing the responses of completely non-compliant states, a process for which there is no announced deadline. 

Even if eventually implemented, the Prakash Singh directives, with their focus on political interference, may fail to significantly reduce arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and other mistreatment, and deaths in police custody.[99] These abuses cannot be ascribed solely to illegitimate political influence, although the problems are linked because of de facto impunity provided by political patrons.

Activists and lawyers have repeatedly pointed out the danger of a reform agenda that seeks to free police from political control without making them more accountable to the public. Indeed, the Supreme Court in Prakash Singh left undisturbed the police’s general immunity from prosecution for serious misconduct, as provided under section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code.[100] The police reform agenda also does not address the working and living conditions of low-ranking police, who are often the perpetrators of the abuses, carrying out illegal orders or operating within a police culture that condones and facilitates such behavior.

According to Vrinda Grover, a prominent human rights lawyer:

The police reform campaign in this country has been lead by former, retired police. It’s like a trade union movement, it’s trying to get more for your own. For groups to get involved and say this is how human rights is going to be furthered is extremely dangerous. You’re dealing with a force that is extremely powerful, that has acted with a culture of impunity....The answers that are being provided are a small part of the full story.[101]

While changing laws to prevent political figures from exercising undue influence over police is critical, it is equally necessary to ensure that political control is replaced with accountability of the police to the community. Accordingly, police reform efforts should include steps to hold police accountable for human rights violations, an issue discussed in Chapter IV.