Cops wary of move against lawyers

Defending its inaction against unruly men in lawyers’ robes who attacked JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, teachers, students and journalists in the Patiala House courts complex, the Delhi police has reportedly told the Union home ministry that past experience has shown that the men in uniform have been at the receiving end whenever they have confronted lawyers in the city and other states.

The police report to the MHA said the force cannot dare to confront lawyers as “past experiences in 1980 and 2000 in Delhi, Jaipur, Chennai, and Allahabad have clearly shown that the police has always been at a receiving end and has been castigated for either excessive use of force or for not exercising enough restraint in the cases of tackling lawyers in the court premises.”

The report also cited two incidents in which senior Delhi police officials, who had ordered lathicharge on lawyers, were never given ground duty and had to face lot of harassment through inquiry commissions.

Justifying its act to remain silent to the abusive and violent acts of the lawyers, the Delhi police said it has also been seen that mostly innocent lawyers face the flip side of any action and the unruly ones manage to go scot free. The report said: “Hence, the police personnel deployed in the court premises were asked to exercise restrain till situation warranted retributive action. That lawyers who are supposed to act as pillars of democracy and to defend human rights could resort to reprehensible activity like physical assault, blocking the gates, targeting mediapersons, chasing students etc. could not be visualised in normal cognition.”

The police, which acted as a mute spectator when the lawyers turned violent, said the prescribed measures of crowd dispersal which include use of tear gas, water cannons and lathicharge in an open space to disperse and retreat could not have been resorted to at Patiala House courts complex which comprises of various structural buildings, parking space which was full of vehicles on working days and other congested areas.

The police said that any use of lathicharge or tear gas would have made the crowd retreat to closed spaces and thus probability of a stampede would have been high, endangering human lives. The report said: “Further, functioning of the entire court premises would have been jeopardised because of tear gas sneaking into the court rooms. Hence a conscious decision was taken to go in for minimum collateral damage as any such prescribed crowd dispersal measures would have led to unnecessary confrontation impacting the judicial officers, innocent lawyers, litigants, journalists and other innocent bystanders.”

Considering the surcharged behaviour of the lawyers, the police said that a series of meeting were held with the representatives of local bar association which had assured that it would help the police to maintain order in the court. The police debunked the reports that journalists and Mr Kumar had been thrashed.