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Hathras: SIT Gets Cracking, Suspensions Follow But Much More Needed To Be Done

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-10-03 08:45:52

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

It is good that the Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed for inquiring into the Hathras incident in UP has worked for 48 hours on the trot and has come out with a preliminary report. Based on the recommendations of the SIT report, the UP government has suspended the Hathras SP Vikrant Veer and Sadabad circle officer Ram Shabd, SHO Dinesh Kumar Verma, sub-inspector Jagveer Singh and head clerk Mahesh Pal. All the four suspended policemen were posted at the Chanda police station.

The SIT has also recommended narco and polygraph tests for all the accused, the cops and even the victim's family. This is necessary as there are many different versions of the incidents floating around. The SIT must, as one is sure it will, examine all other evidence in detail as the UP police have claimed that forensic tests showed there was no rape. The main thing to look for is whether due process was followed. Prima facie evidence suggests that UP police did everything without following the rules and that is why things went out of hand.

The UP government must introspect why the police acted the way it did. For, there are three main reasons why policemen do not follow rules. First, if they are instructed by their political masters to take a particular line; second, if they are paid off by either party and finally due to in-built biases. In this case, one feels that the first reason could not have applied initially as it was a local case. There is a strong chance that the behavior of the Hathras police was dictated by the other two reasons. The policemen were biased against the Dalits and maybe they were paid off by the accused to hush-up the matter. The hurried cremation points to the fact that the police were afraid of another autopsy being conducted to establish the truth and hence they burnt the body and eliminated that. But the police highhandedness in the last few days is, of course, due to the first reason.

Governments in all states must realize that upper caste officers posted at police stations still treat Dalits as dirt. Even though all citizens have to be treated as equal, the poor, and especially the Dalits and the backward classes among them, have always been at the receiving end of police atrocities. There is a need to sensitize law keepers regarding this. There is no better place than UP to start doing this. 

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