With "berserk" cops hitting a 65-year-old woman in Aligarh and a young girl in Delhi, the Supreme Court on Thursday sought the response of the Delhi Police Commissioner and top UP Government officials on how brute force was allowed to be used against unarmed women.
Seeking a response for the "dastardly" manner in which an officer of the rank of Deputy SP of UP Police pushed down a 65-year-old woman in Aligarh, the bench of Justices GS Singhvi, Ranjana Desai and Sharad Arvind Bobde said, "How can they be so atrocious to do this to an old woman….We just need to imagine this that in place of that lady what would have been our reaction if it was our mother or sisterIJ"
The court also took notice of the conduct shown by a Delhi Police ACP slapping a young woman protester agitating against police inaction over the rape of a five-year girl child in east Delhi. "The police have gone berserk," the bench said, and sought an affidavit from the Commissioner explaining the rationale of using unwarranted force against the young girl who bled from her ear.
"What preventive action has been taken, what is the accountability of the superior officers," were the questions to which the court expected response in the affidavits to be filed before May 6. With the court already examining two similar cases of police atrocity against woman in Punjab and Bihar, the frequency of such incidents made the court doubt that similar incidents were only waiting to happen in other parts of the country.
"If police turns into a lawless body and officers lose their self-esteem, there will be no respect for women in this country," the court observed.
Dealing with the larger issue of police reforms where a 2006 Supreme Court decision directed States to set up Security Commission to overcome inadequacies in police establishment and make them independent of political control, the court saw that most States had not complied with its order while several had diluted the same.
With focus on Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Goa, the court directed the respective Chief Secretaries to report compliance of the 2006 order within a week.