mid-day turns 40 - Let's Talk: Shirish Inamdar and Bilal Siddiqi

Shirish Inamdar and Bilal Siddiqi

With a burgeoning population comes the burden of a soaring crime. The understaffed Mumbai police have been trying to do their best, but have, over the years, come under a lot of flack for the dipping detection rates. And, with the advent of social media, their headache has become a throbbing migraine. Despite technology going some way in helping the police in their work, it has also brought with it problems the archaic policing system is finding extremely difficult to tackle. Former additional deputy commissioner of police Shirish Inamdar and young author Bilal Siddiqi discuss the changing face of crime over the past four decades, how policing is in desperate need of an overhaul and how citizens, too, can contribute towards keeping Mumbai safe.

What is your take on the changing face of crime in Mumbai in the last 40 years?
Shirish Inamdar: The ethos of society has changed a lot in the last 40 years, and crime, too, has changed. Every crime is important for the police, but these days we only cover sensational crime, not the petty ones that the common man is concerned about. If a common man goes to the police station with a complaint related to cognisable cases, he does not receive the right response from the police. It is a matter of concern and is increasing by the day. That has changed the face of crime not just in Mumbai, but all over India.

At police stations you will see statistics and every police officer boasts of having controlled crime. Are there any statistics of how many offences are burked [complaints not being converted into FIRs]? It is 10,000 times the registered crimes. If 100 people go to the police in 24 hours with cognisable cases, not even two are registered.

For the past 50 years, at police stations in the heart of the city, like Lamignton Road, VP Road, Nagpada, etc, the crime figures are the same. This is because we place importance on figures while gauging the performance of a cop instead of his attitude to policing. If your chain is snatched, what the police do is register a missing person complaint. This is to sweep the crime under the carpet and show that he is successful in controlling crime. Just to sidestep their answerability, they don't register the case.

Forty years ago, the police had less work and today the police are wasting 80% of their energy and resources in meaningless work. There is no crime that has become extinct. Crime is crime. Its quantum and seriousness may change with time, location and section of people, etc. During our younger days in the police, the maximum theft cases used to be of bicycles. How many bicycles are stolen these days? Now, it is motorcycles and cars; chain snatching cases have increased.

After the advent of IT, instead of risking his life in crime, police started cheating by using social media and that's how cyber police stations came about. How many people know where the cyber police station is? And how many know the procedure to file a case there? How many people know how to preserve evidence? How many cyber crime cases have secured conviction in the last one year? Statistics reveal everything. With due respect to the judiciary, how many magistrates are knowledgeable about cyber crime, like how to treat evidence, how to analyse it, how to record evidence about cyber detection. Crime has not changed, the modus operandi has.

Bilal Siddiqi: The mediums have increased these days, so we have to be more careful about what we are putting out there because there is so much information disseminated on WhatsApp and other social media platforms which tend to influence people's minds.

We have to be more responsible.

What's your take on police encounters? Do you think the free hand given to encounter specialists helped the force bring the situation under control in the late 90s?
Inamdar: It is extra-judicial killings in the shortest possible time. When your constitutionally established criminal justice system fails, the police get an excuse to take the law into their own hands and by doing that, the media and public in general get a sense of hero-dom and start praising the police or the system. And, that issue of encounters gets glorified out of proportion. An encounter, according to me, is not a solution, it is surrendering before circumstances. It just made the police 'trigger happy'.
Bilal: Encounters in many ways have been glorified in films and in popular culture as if it is the right thing to do.

With the extradition of Chhota Rajan, Abu Salem and the arrest of Ravi Pujari (in Senegal), do you think the underworld is on the verge of being finished off?
Shirish: It has been minimised. I was looking after the extradition for the Mumbai police. When Chhota Rajan was shot on foreign land [in Bangkok], we prepared his extradition papers and submitted them to CBI, and the papers went to Bangkok. And, before the papers were dispatched from here [Mumbai], we came to know from Delhi that the Central government does not want to bring Chhota Rajan back.

Why?
Shirish: Because they want Chhota Rajan there to fight along with them. This is a selective attitude. Rajan was not brought, indeed he was helped to escape from Bangkok. These gangsters are used by politicians for their own purposes. There is a well established theorem in social sciences: 'Society gets what it deserves'. The underworld is a filmy name given by the media. There is now an under, under, underworld which we call 'darknet' or cybercrime. The underworld has shifted to smuggling of drugs and cybercrime because now a bank can be emptied within seconds. So, why will they indulge in gang wars and murders? This is the changed face of crime.

How have the riots and bomb blasts changed Mumbai's identity? The Mumbai police had never seen such a big terror-related calamity. How did it affect the police force?
Shirish: Any metropolitan city in the world is not free of attacks because it carries a tag called 'soft target' at first, 'iconic target' secondly and thirdly 'economic target'. Having said that, I won't say that the 26/11 attacks could have been averted. No country can say that they are free from such attacks, including the United States. But, again, that requires a lot of all-round effort, including public education, public participation, modernisation of thought processes, etc. Many countries have done so with some degree of success, because a 100 per cent success rate is not attainable.

Let's make a test case. Go to the police station to register a case of theft. The first question they will ask you is 'video footage hai kya?' In the past, was video footage needed to solve such cases? And, the police blatantly tell you if there is no video footage, we cannot do anything. In order to shift the onus on to the people, the police say every housing society should have CCTV cameras. What is the responsibility of the police then? In the mess of modernisation, we have lost sight of the basics. Basics of policing like patrolling, beat marshalling, etc, should not be lost.

What is the duty of a beat marshal? It is to create confidence in the minds of people about the presence of the police. Take a survey for a month and see what they are doing. There is a difference between policing and service. How many of our police officers know how to retrieve evidence from a crime scene? How many of them know how to preserve it? What is the use then of depending on electronic evidence?

The police have changed. In 1973, when I was selected as a sub-inspector, there was rigorous training for two years with R100 per month stipend. Now, a sub-inspector gets a full salary and eleven months training. After this training, they come to the police station and deal with public grievances. It's a mockery! The training given to the police is important because times are changing, modus operandi is changing, etc. Training is the most neglected aspect of policing.

Is Mumbai and its police prepared to tackle 26/11-like terror attacks?
Shirish: What do you mean by 'tackle'? Does it mean carrying the injured to hospital and bodies to a mortuary?
Is the media prepared to tackle terror attacks? Tackling is the responsibility of all of us, not only the police. But, the Mumbai attacks led to the creation of Force One, which is the best counterterrorism force in India, if not the world. Their training, arms, ammunition, equipment, etc, are up to the mark. But this elite force cannot remain present before an attack, otherwise it will not remain an elite force. What about the first line defenders? Can our city constables, sub-inspectors fight with a 9MM against a person holding an AK 47?

And, the second is intelligence. Every such attack is succeeded by intelligence collection by rivals. Our counter intelligence machinery should be prepared. How many police officers are interested in the intelligence job? Very few, because it is not well-paying. Also, intelligence requires a lot of reading, study and research. The state government had started a dedicated cadre in intelligence. I am involved in that process and I have taught five batches, and there has been some improvement.

Illustration/Ravi Jadhav

What about cybercrime? Are the city police equipped to detect digital frauds?
Bilal: People like me, born in the early 1990s, have grown up with the Internet. We do not know life without it. So for us, naturally, dependency is on the Internet and there are a lot of great things, but with that comes the power to misuse it. From downloading a song to harassing a girl or guy by faking someone's identity. I am telling you from the
point of view of a civilian who does not actually know that they are committing an offence until they are booked.
Shirish: If I go to a cyber police station and tell cops that I have been asked for my PIN number or I received a message saying that my account has been deducted by R25,000, the cops will ask 'why have you given the PIN number? The bank has instructed you to take safety measures' or 'you should be thankful that only R25,000 has been taken'. What is the definition of cheating in IPC? It says 'By inducing a person by misrepresentation of fact to part with the property. It fits into that; only it has to be juxtaposed with the IT Act.

Why are the police sending people back then?
Bilal: Also, I think there is another side to cybercrime which is recruitment of terror groups via social media.
Shirish: I have been teaching international terrorism and it was mind-boggling to know how Instagram and other social media were being used since 2013 by ISIS to recruit from all over the world and without even seeing each other's faces. Girls and boys of 14 or 15, left their countries and joined them in Yemen and Syria. Only because of this cyber network.
Bilal: Awareness has to be instilled at the citizen level. The menace of fake news on social media, too, has to be tackled. There is no hard effort required in doctoring facts. And, once it is made viral, people believe it to be true.

What core area should the Mumbai police focus on to keep crime under control?
Shirish: We need to reform the police. Crime investigation and detection can be imbibed by concentrated training. Then there is law and order, where correcting social and political intelligence affecting law and order situations and how to deal with them. And, then, there is intelligence. A very innovative idea is neded to reform the police.
Siddiqi: Today, we have lost faith in the police. There should not be a trust deficit. There are a few rotten apples who spoil the image of the police.

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