New Delhi: Senior police officials in
India frequently use low-ranking staff as their "orderlies"
and even "personal family servants", an international human
rights organisation has alleged in its latest report.
The US-based Human Rights Watch claimed that the
police structure in India was based on a colonial law that did
not provide the lower ranks, usually local recruits, with
operational authority or advanced professional training.
"Inexplicably, that system continues six decades after
the end of British rule in India," it added.
Constables, the bottom rank, make up as much as 85 per
cent of the Indian police, but for the most part they are not
trained to investigate crime complaints, it said.
"Junior and low-ranking police are frequently
demoralised due to degrading working and living conditions,"
the rights body claimed on the basis of interviews of low
ranking policemen it conducted in the country.
"Many low-ranking police officers live in barracks
that are deteriorating, cramped, and without enough beds," it
alleged.
Junior-ranking police officers have little chance of
promotion and are subject to the "unrealistic" demands of
senior officers, who are for the most part directly recruited
into management positions and often have "no first hand
knowledge of the difficulties the lower ranks face", it added.
Bureau Report
First Published: Thursday, October 29, 2009, 11:13