28 August 2007 | Telegraph
Shocking pictures of a thief being beaten by a mob in Bhagalpur, Bihar are all over the Indian TV today.
Mob rule: a still from the video shows the stricken man
What has caught everyone’s attention is the involvement of the police who, far from protecting the thief from the mob, joined in with gusto, eventually tying the man to their motorbike and dragging him through the street until he was unconscious.
I have an Indian friend who gave me a very good piece of advice when I arrived here, which was ‘don’t mess’ with the police, they can do whatever they like. They really can ruin your life.
After the story broke I found myself in conversation with a friend about the merits of putting such salacious footage on TV.
He reckoned that while the news networks were clearly ambulance (or ratings) chasing, airing this stuff was performing a service – namely confronting India with its own brutality while giving the potential perpetrators of such crimes pause for thought before dishing out the next thrashing.
Undoubtedly the video and picture mobiles which many people in India now have make such crimes harder to commit. Without those pictures the beating of this thief, as my friend correctly pointed out, would have merited “two pars” in the local paper whereas the video footage has turned it into a national issue.
However Ravi Nair, executive director of the South Asian Human Rights Network in New Delhi has a different take, blaming the media – TV and movie industry – for glorifying “encounter cops” who went around meting out rough justice.
He also points out that the news networks love to run these stories but hardly ever follow them up to see what happened to the victim or, indeed, if the perpetrators were ever successfully prosecuted.
So will any of this voyeurism – I use the term advisedly, when you watch the video you simply can’t take your eyes of it, sickening though it may be – make a difference?
Over time, I think it will, since any society which is made to watch this kind of brutality will have to begin asking questions of itself.
Most Indians I know accept police brutality with the same resignation that they accept corruption. “It goes on and there is nothing that can be done about it,” is the usual argument.
Part of the reason for this is legal. Indian police are genuinely immune from prosecution since, under Section 197 of the Indian Penal Code a prima facie case of police torture – the electrical burns, the bruises, the broken bones – is not enough to bring a prosecution.
For that you need formal permission from the state’s ‘home secretary’ equivalent, permission that is virtually never forthcoming.
As Mr Nair points out, this equates India with ‘Pinochet’s Chile’ when it comes to holding the instruments of the state accountable.
I imagine that would surprise plenty of people who live outside this country but, sad to report, all too often it’s true.
Source: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/3627461/Brutal_police_beating_aired_on_Indian_TV/