Fugitive factory

Former chief minister of Kerala E K Nayanar gets a non-bailable arrest warrant on February 10, 2009 for a road blockade around Thriruvananthapuram district collectorate on September 12, 2002. Nobody had told the magistrate that the most popular politician in the state died on May 19, 2004.

The legal system can be comical as well as cruel. It made the late leader – who was chief minister till 2001 – posthumously absconding. Nayanar the satirist would have loved the irony.

Going by court records, many of the political activists are fugitives. Some of them go on to become ministers and receive salutes by the same policemen who are supposed to track them to their hideouts. The accused never knew they have been accused of anything. Either the court messenger didn’t give the summons to the local policeman or the policeman didn’t serve the summons on the accused.

If a television reporter could get an Ahmedabad magistrate to issue warrants against the then President A P J Abdul Kalam and the then Chief Justice of India V N Khare at a cost of Rs 40,000 in January 2004, the policemen are doing the same to unsuspecting citizens across the country by sitting on summons.

They fail to serve the summons to the accused and return it to the court, which in turn, issues an arrest warrant against the ‘evader’. An archaic system of recording address – district, taluk, village and other obscure revenue subdivisions – contributes to the confusion. The pin code efficiency of the postal system is yet to catch up with judiciary in India.

Not long ago, a student leader had faced revenue recovery proceedings by a local court. SFI’s then president Sindhu Joy and her comrades, forever in news for their numerous agitations in front of the state secretariat, were declared ‘absconding’ by the court. Call it laziness or laxity. But top cops aver that the force is prompt. Only there are too many warrants and too few to execute it.

But when it comes to arresting and accusing people, the police work overtime. They call it combing. Years ago, a plumber accused with a petty offence was introduced before the magistrate in Aluva. The magistrate, who fortunately followed the proceedings and asked the accused in private about any complaint against the police, was told that the man was nabbed a fortnight ago. He had come from Idukki in search of a job to raise money for his daughter’s marriage. The police took him in from the bus stand “under suspicious circumstances.” The plumber’s pipe range was a potential “housebreak implement”. “My daughter was supposed to get married by now. I don’t know what happened,” he said.

A serious case of abuse of power. The policeman on combing duty finds a “suspicious-looking” man in a bus stand. He takes him in. Fine. But he is supposed to present him before a magistrate within 24 hours. The cop, however, decides not to register the arrest and forgets about the “criminal”. Despite the detainee’s pleas, the police put off the case. Finally he verifies the address given by the plumber and confirms it, keeping him in illegal detention all these time. A fit case for taking action against the cops. But the plumber, anxious to return to his worried family, pleads the magistrate not to. The magistrate knows better. The policemen had enough scope to avenge the victim under another pretext.

Our cops may look tough, but on closer look they are as naughty as any teenage prankster. They raise the dead to hang them. They proclaim the living as dead. They make ministers absconders. They make little girls bandits. Of course, you need an eye for humour to appreciate their efforts.

A group of student activists, accused of ‘destruction of public property’ during a street agitation in Kochi a few years ago, was bewildered when they got a copy of the chargesheet. None of them has heard the name of the first accused. Anyway, they needed to find him if they were to be let on bail. The search finally ended in a city hotel, where the first accused has been working as a waiter.

The youth, hailing from a remote village, had gone to the university centre in the college on that fateful day to enquire about a law course. Inexperienced, he found himself at the centre of the melee. Since law was blind, its keepers acted deaf to his explanations. The law students were surprised to hear the waiter giving them tips on conducting the case. The wannabe law student has learned his lessons.

No wonder cops are second only to cancer on the villain’s list in our movies.