Greed on wrist

It is a fact known to all that the government officers, whether in the administration or the police, are inclined to make the power they wield felt at the expense of the hapless multitude. Some of them have greed too inherent  in them. However, an IPS, who is supposed to wield immense power in the district he is posted seems  to have eclipsed his worthy colleagues  in terms  of squeezing people to gratify  his greed. A surprise was  kept in store  for a person who had  recently visited the IPS’s office by way  of  a  courtesy call. The IPS asked him to unfasten  the watch he was having from   his wrist. He said he wanted to see  how the  watch would fit on his wrist. The unsuspecting  visitor did the same.  Fitting it on his  wrist, the IPS asked him to comment  how  it  was  looking then having changed  wrist. The visitor courteously said it was looking nice. Then the IPS said without batting an eye that he had better go for another one. The bemused visitor returned, shorn of the watch he had come with. However, the police fraternity seeks to make the matter light, saying that though the act is immoral on the  part of the IPS, the visitor might have some vested  interest to  humour  the IPS. It means what happened served the visitor right, a roundabout defence  of what the IPS has done.

Audacity, ineffectual rage

Secure in the knowledge that he has a powerful mentor who would connive with his  pranks,   a young IPS refused to accept a duty assigned to  him by  his seniors related to the President’s  visit. Not just that, the IPS  chose to go on leave during the time  the  President was in the state,  in an blatant display of audacity, throwing  all norms to the winds. The seniors took things hard, but they are left with little option but to squirm in ineffectual rage.  They know they can hardly touch his hair, given his proximity to those who call the shots in the department.  They know too that the audacious officer would get a plum posting in   any of the three districts-   Dehradun, Haridwar and Rudraprayag- where the police reshuffle was shelved due to the President’s visit. Some of the senior cops who are vegetating in the department, shorn of political links, are  exasperated,  seeing the IPS getting away with his audacious act. Things are going to the  extreme, they say while   asking for  stringent action to rein in such audacious officers who are flaunting connection to ridicule the dignity  of the department.