"Nobody listens to our orders, police reforms are going on and on”. The brevity of that observation from a three-member bench of the apex court headed by the Chief Justice of India, as it dismissed a plea for early hearing of a PIL on the matter, reflected deep frustration rather than annoyance. It served as nothing less than an indictment of a series of Union home ministers that included both Rajnath Singh and P Chidambaram (along with a string of their counterparts in the state governments) and underscored the shameful lack of political will to remedy a critical aspect of nationwide mis-governance. For it underscored a sick reality that regardless of their party complexion, governments believed that “favoured” police forces were the most effective means for ensuring that their political agenda was furthered ~ at the cost of the wellbeing of the common citizen. Not just local police organisations functioned at the beck and call of the chief minister, even supposedly prime outfits like the Central Bureau of Investigation and the National Investigation Agency (along with the enforcement agencies of the finance ministry, etc.,) have lost their credibility in the public eye. No wonder then that the common demand is now for a “court-monitored” probe, the cops have forfeited the confidence of the public. Now, none other than the Chief Justice of India has slammed the lip service paid to police reform.

It would also appear ironic that the court’s “vision” was articulated when it dismissed a petition from a Delhi lawyer and BJP activist, for at this point in time the Delhi Police is the subject of much criticism for its permitting “saffron” to unleash a reign of violence in the two major universities in the Capital. The petition may have been drafted earlier, but there would be many who would “smell a rat” in its’ stating that “arbitrary and unaccountable functioning of the police has led to complete alienation of many citizens from the state. Complete politicisation of the police has led to highly partisan crime investigation”. The court declined to enter into any discussion on the subject, but if the petitioner was nobly motivated he might do better to press his “case” with his party’s leadership. Rather than have the judiciary do the dirty work. The reality is that there has been no comprehensive re-working of the law under which the police functions: the marginal tinkering and tweaking at various levels has hardly impacted the “philosophy” of the Police Act of 1861, drafted with a colonial mindset in the wake of the 1857 uprising. In 2007 the Supreme Court had issued a seven-point reform blueprint, but the best comment on its implementation is what their Lordships have just averred.