While new evidence in the recent ‘brick-throwing incident’ has highlighted the fact that the woman, Ramanjeet Kaur, also misbehaved with the head constable Satish Chand, and was perhaps the one who instigated him, Traffic Police personnel claim that they have to face abuse and misbehaviour from citizens almost every single day. Rampal Singh, Traffic Inspector posted at Aligaon in Sarita Vihar, told The Pioneer that while there may be one-off incidents of a traffic official reacting to such instigations by people, there are hundreds of others who patiently listen to the abuse and still act professionally.
“Whenever we stop anyone for an offence, first they request us to let them go. But when we tell them that they have committed an offence and they will have to pay the fine, and they realise that we are not letting them off without the fine, they start behaving rudely and do all sorts of things that they feel like. They would accuse us of unfairly targeting them, call us corrupt who just want the money, or even threaten us of getting us suspended. Why get our goat because of a few black sheep in the forceIJ” asked Singh even as a man who was just stopped by one of the constables started arguing that it’s an MlA’s car and be allowed to pass.
Singh added that while a common man may have faced a cop misbehaving with them once in their lives, or maybe never, but a cop has people misbehave with them every single day. “They threaten us by dropping big names claiming they know those people and can have us dismissed in no time. Often they call someone and give us the phone to talk to the person. All this while we are just doing our job,” he added.
Sub-Inspector Virender Pratap has lost count of the number of times he has been told “Tu jaanta nahi hai mein kaun hoon, teri vardi utarwa doonga” (You don’t know who I am, I will have you dismissed). “Since we don’t have the power to arrest them, all we can do is call a nearby PCR van. And after it arrives, either they simply pay the fine or blame us for misbehaviour,” he said.
Special Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Muktesh Chander says that for one traffic official who misbehaves with people, there are thousands of people who misbehave with traffic officials. “First they deny that they even committed the offence; then they justify it giving various reasons. And when that doesn’t work, they shift to name dropping, threats and so on. And finally when they actually have to pay the fine, they unnecessarily abuse and say various things to our men, often accusing them that they are challaning just to harass people, or for money,” he said.