Police reeling under administrative failures and rising public anger amid coronavirus lockdown in Punjab
SI Sone, a female sub-inspector in charge of the Dera Sahib police chowki in Goindwal, in Punjab’s Taran Taran district, was out distributing food to those in need in her area on 28 March, with a couple of other police personnel and some local Gurdwara volunteers. People largely appreciated the gesture, she said over the phone, but, in the village of Lohar, “some unscrupulous and notorious elements started pelting and chasing the police vehicle. They also attacked the Gurudwara volunteers.” The senior superintendant of police for Taran Taran, Dhruv Dahia, confirmed the incident when contacted. Kulwant Singh, one of the volunteers, told me people were targeting the police to take out their frustration at the mess created by the coronavirus lockdown, which has exposed glaring failures of planning and implementation by the government. There were videos of similar assaults circulating on social media, he added, and these were emboldening the public.
Harjyot Singh, a sales manager at an automotive dealership in Chandigarh, learnt on 26 March that one of his closest friends had died that morning in a car accident. Since his friend’s family was away, he got on a scooter and headed out to collect the body from the civil hospital in Mohali, adjoining Chandigarh. He was stopped by police on the way. “I tried my best to explain it to them, when a constable came and started caning me,” he said. He remembered that the policeman assaulting him kept saying, “Jad tak scooter ghuma ke race nahin dinda, dande vajde rehenge”—The canes will keep coming until you the scooter around. Harjyot described the incident in a Facebook post and tagged media houses, the Mohali police, the local deputy commissioner’s office and the Punjab chief minister, Amarinder Singh. When contacted, the SSP for Mohali, Kuldeep Singh Chahal, said he was not aware of any such incident. “I have given strict instructions to my personnel to refrain from high handedness,” he said.
Harjyot was left outraged by the police’s “immoral and stupid” ways. “We all laugh and enjoy such forwards on WhatsApp,” he wrote in his post, “but trust me we never know when anyone of us may need to step out and this can happen to you guys as well. Whereas police in other states are requesting people with folded hands to stay inside, the very infamous, insensitive and incapable Punjab Police often forget that they are public servants and not goons in uniforms.”
Punjab faces the possibility of a major outbreak of COVID-19, likely exacerbated by a heavy influx of NRIs from other affected countries into the state in recent months. The lockdown implemented to contain the outbreak has been badly planned and badly executed, here as much as in many other states. The Punjab police, tasked with enforcing the lockdown, has emerged in the role of both the good cop and the bad cop. Instances abound of the police assaulting or humiliating people found outside. People have posted numerous videos online of cases of police violence, and of public humiliation of people found outside. Some footage shows police forcing people to roll on the ground, or to hold up signs saying that declare them “enemies of the people.” Especially in a state where the police have long been criticised for their excesses, including in operations against the Khalistani insurgency, these incidents have triggered public outrage. On 26 March, Amarinder Singh tweeted that he had ordered the police to take action against “the few policemen who were unreasonable.” He added, “They are overshadowing the good work being done by most. I will not tolerate these excesses.”
Meanwhile, the police have also been pressed into action to deliver relief to vulnerable people caught out by the lockdown, filling in for other government agencies that are meant to handle such work but, by and large, have been conspicuously absent. This has meant extra working hours and added pressures, only made worse by a lack of basic protective measures such as face masks for personnel and sanitisation of police facilities. As the most visible agents of the government on the ground, the police have become a symbol of the administration’s malfunction and a magnet for the resulting fallout.
More than 40,000 police personnel have been deployed to enforce the lockdown, according to official figures. “Ensuring compliance with the lockdown is our duty, and is a herculean task given the gravity of the situation,” a senior police official said, requesting anonymity. But the police have been left to do much more than their stipulated tasks of preserving law and order. “Those from the District Food and Supplies Controller office are not showing up, and we were told that many refused to go to the borders areas and slums due to the fear of contracting COVID-19.”
A government press release dated 25 March stated that Punjab’s director general of police, Dinkar Gupta, had called on officers to think “out-of-the-box” in response to the situation. The police have engaged volunteers across the state, often working with gurdwaras. They have also, according to official releases, tied-up with the likes of Amul, Zomato, Swiggy, mandi pradhans and chemist associations to facilitate door-step supply of essential goods. The police claim to have distributed over 150,000 packets of dry food on 26 March, and almost 200,000 the following day. The police website for Taran Taran shows photographs of personnel “on the way to helping needy” and going “door to door to help.”
But ensuring access to food and medical supplies is not the only issue. The 25 March press release noted that police teams in certain areas had to deal with shortages of cooking gas, arrangements for drug addicts to visit hospitals and de-addiction centres, farmers’ demands for agricultural supplies and safe transport of their crops, and more.
The police’s “112” helpline has been “converted to a curfew helpline, and it now responds to and deals with all curfew-related problems,” another senior police official said. The official added that the helpline has been working round the clock and fielding over 17,000 calls a day from across the state, directing callers to district-specific helplines. The government is in talks with a private contractor to bring in additional staff to manage the hotline.
Some security personnel complained to me of “false” distress calls that were adding to the police’s already heavy burden. A senior Border Security Force official said that a group of 25 families stranded in a BSF cantonment in Amritsar’s Ram Teerath area had called a police helpline to ask for emergency supplies, despite already having been provided with meals and 15 days’ worth of rations. A relief volunteer confirmed this incident. In Chandigarh, a team that went to help a group of labourers claiming to have gone hungry for three days arrived to they were preparing food and already had stocks.
Police personnel also complained about their working conditions. One female officer said she had been working almost around the clock, managing on only short naps. Several personal from across ranks pointed out that they had not been given suitable masks, and that police stations, posts and beat boxes in Chandigarh had not been sanitised. “I am risking my life like thousands of others of my colleagues,” an inspector said. He said he had been forced to avoid contact with his family while he continued to work, for fear that the lack of protective measures and his possible exposure to coronavirus-infected people would mean he might pass the virus on to them. Those higher up the chain of command, he added, “are not bothered about their juniors.”
Various police personnel said they were being given facemasks of questionable efficacy being made by the Punjab Armed Police. The special DGP for armed battalions, Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota, said when contacted that ten tailors from various PAP battalions had been ordered to stitch cloth masks. He added that quite a few masks had been donated to the police as well, and these were also being given out.
“Whatever masks we are getting, we are distributing the same while our personnel also ensure social distance,” Chahal, the SSP for Mohali, which has had six confirmed coronavirus cases, said. When asked why many police personnel were resorting to wearing handkerchiefs over their faces, he replied, “Actually, these masks don’t go with the personality of a cop in a turban. So, they might have tied a handkerchief.”