Manoj's World

COP THE CRIMINAL

Looting the tribal in Maoist land

IN terms of tackling the Maoists, Chhattisgarh showcased a stark irony in the last week of the year gone by. The state has witnessed the miscarriage of justice; there may be hope yet that civil society hasn’t tiptoed in its response to the life sentence handed down to Dr Binayak Sen. Hideous no less has been the looting and criminal misbehaviour of policemen in the Maoist-dominated region of Bastar. So serious indeed that it has provoked a senior officer to apologise to the tribals and compensate the villagers for the goods stolen, as reported in this newspaper.

Having failed to countenance the Maoists, even with helicopter gunships and the central paramilitary, the state police have descended to criminality. Rice, poultry and other items ~ indeed the source of livelihood of the subalterns in Dantewada district ~ were looted by the police on 24 December. Considering the magnitude of the crime in an impoverished, insurgency-hit region, it will not suffice merely for the district police chief to apologise and dole out Rs 13,000 to the tribals ~ a pittance rather than a compensation. The culprits will have to be identified and action taken. It bears recall that last April, the local police had failed to provide the logistical assistance to the paramilitary, a lapse that led to the killing of 76 CRPF personnel by the Maoists.

The repentant SP only labours the obvious that “looting by policemen is highly deplorable and creates a bad image about the force”. The short point must be that the force has scarcely an image to protect. Its Salwa Judum experiment ~ designed to keep teenagers in the forefront and the police in the rearguard ~ has had disastrous consequences. It has failed to rein in the Maoists, still less afford a measure of protection in the vulnerable areas. To subvert prosecution to the point of perversion of justice is a bizarre act of self-defence. And now looting has reduced the cop to a criminal.