After being attacked from all quarters for its ‘failure’ to act against rioting lawyers during the JNU student sedition case hearing on Monday and Wednesday on the Patiala House court complex, the Delhi Police on Thursday defended its ‘inaction’ in a report despatched to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
The report accessed by The Pioneer stated, “Past experiences in 1980 and 2000 in Delhi, Jaipur, Chennai, and Allahabad have clearly shown that police have always been at the receiving end and have been castigated for either use of excessive force or for not exercising enough restraint in tackling lawyers on court premises.”
A senior police officer said there was no clear direction from the apex court for police to tackle the situation emerging from the lawyers’ protest. Using force in a packed space could have been catastrophic as a stampede could have led to serious injuries, said Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi.
Also, the report cited two past incidents in which senior Delhi Police officials who ordered lathi-charge on lawyers were never given ground duty and faced lots of harassment through enquiry commissions.
In 1980 Kiran Bedi as DCP, North district used force against lawyers inside the Tis Hazari courts to disperse them after they had turned violent over the arrest of a lawyer, an officer told The Pioneer, adding that Pranab Nanda was DCP New Delhi in 2000 when a protest by lawyers at Parliament Street turned out of control.
“Nanda was compelled to use force to stop ‘agitating’ lawyers from entering Parliament as session was in progress and then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was present in the House along with his Ministers. Nanda had to face an enquiry commission and it took him considerable effort to clear his name. Nanda never returned to the Delhi Police after the incident,” said the officer.
Justifying its act, the Delhi Police further stated it has seen that mostly innocent lawyers face the flip side of any action and the unruly ones go scot free. The report said, “Hence, police personnel deployed on the court premises were asked to exercise restraint till the situation warranted retributive action.
“That lawyers who are supposed to act as pillars of democracy and to defend human rights could resort to reprehensible act like physical assault, blocking the gates, targeting media persons, chasing students etc could be visualised in normal cognition.”
The report stated, “Use of tear gas, water cannon and lathi-charge could have further jeopardised functioning of the entire court premises because of tear gas. Hence a conscious decision was taken to go in for minimum collateral damage as any such prescribed crowd dispersal measures would have led to unnecessary confrontation impacting the judicial officers, innocent lawyers’ litigants, journalist and other innocent bystanders.”
The report stated police cannot dare confrontation with lawyers. Police said considering the surcharged behaviour of the lawyers, a series of meeting were held with the representatives of local Bar Association and it was assured by the Bar that it will be helping police to maintain orderliness in the court. But it didn’t happen so. Interestingly, police debunked the reports of journalists and Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar being thrashed.