{"id":24503,"date":"2015-10-12T16:03:07","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T10:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.entecity.com\/?p=24503"},"modified":"2015-10-12T20:10:07","modified_gmt":"2015-10-12T14:40:07","slug":"open-letter-to-kerala-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/open-letter-to-kerala-police\/","title":{"rendered":"An \u2018Open Letter\u2019 to Kerala Police from a law abiding citizen!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Few days ago I read a news in The Hindu<\/a>, about a Techie in Trivandrum who had to face a horrendous ordeal at the hands of police officers.<\/p>\n

Here is the background of the news<\/h2>\n

P.V. Shyamlal a native of Vattiyurkavu<\/strong> was unlawfully arrested when his motorbike collided with a policeman’s bike. Shyamlal says the policeman even tried to hit him with his helmet and then punched him. According to the news a police team soon arrived and the two were taken to the Medical College Hospital first and then to Medical College Janamaitri station.<\/p>\n

But the techie\u2019s real ordeal started at the police station. \u201cThe head constable took my mobile phone. Then another policeman and the sub inspector slapped me. When I told them that such behaviour was a violation of my rights as a citizen, the policemen said that such rights existed only in movies. They also said that I was behaving senselessly because I am a Technopark<\/a> employee. The SI told me that a case would be charged against me for obstructing a policeman\u2019s duty and pressurised me to settle the issue with the policeman by giving him some money. I refused,\u201d says Shyamlal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shyamlal had to beg several times to make a phone call to his office. He also called two people who were present when the incident happened. Shyamlal had to spend the whole day at the police station. One can only imagine the mental trauma experienced by this young man.<\/p>\n

The Rights existed only in movies? Absolutely not!<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"57344013\"<\/p>\n

Now our Supreme Court has issued an 11-point guideline on how to arrest a person<\/a>. Two of the points outlined are – 1. The person arrested, detained or being interrogated has a right to have a relative, friend or well-wisher informed as soon as practicable <\/em>and 2. The right not to be ill-treated or tortured during arrest or in custody. <\/em>Here Shyamlal was denied of his basic rights.<\/p>\n

What happened here is a clear violation of human rights. Now what does this say of the police force in our country?\u00a0 The very people who are expected to protect us are the ones who torture us. This is not British Raj, this is a free land.<\/strong>\u00a0 On the one side, government is trying hard to implement ‘ Janamaitri ‘ police system while on the other side some police officers are ruining the image of our police force. Ironically this incident happened in a Janamaitri Police station.<\/p>\n

People need awareness about their rights and the law<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"police-brutality_o_2244271\"<\/p>\n

Are police above the law? Police are not above the law, they are only custodians of the law. If you are not guilty, you don\u2019t need to fear anybody. There are laws to protect our civil rights. We just need to know how to use it. Most of the people are too scared to proceed the case and instead they try to settle the case by succumbing to the pressure. Stand your ground.<\/p>\n

How to prevent such incidents?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In western countries, police officers have to wear body cameras while on duty. Plus there is a dash camera fitted on the dashboard of all police vehicles. All police station should be under CCTV surveillance connected to a common control centre. If the big boss can watch us, then we can watch them too. Government should come up with a special \u2018Internal affairs\u2019 department to check officers with bad track record and kick out those with criminal background. More importantly these police officers need to change their mind-set. They are only a government servant appointed by a government which is elected by the people.<\/p>\n

Police brutality is neither a new phenomenon in India nor in the world. And what happened here is certainly not an isolated case. That said, it doesn\u2019t mean all police officers are rude or arrogant. There are many efficient sincere police officers who put their life on the line to protect us. And we people owe them a lot. But one or two bad cops is enough to\u00a0bring shame to entire police force.<\/p>\n

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere – Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Few days ago I read a news in The Hindu, about a Techie in Trivandrum who had to face a horrendous ordeal at the hands of police officers. Here is the background of the news P.V. Shyamlal a native of Vattiyurkavu was unlawfully arrested when his motorbike collided with a policeman’s bike. Shyamlal says the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,32,4],"tags":[35,136,203],"class_list":["post-24503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-citizen-journalism","category-city-news","category-general","tag-kerala","tag-kerala-police","tag-technopark"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}