Amitabh Bachchan plays the stereotypical stern cop in a Hindi film

There is a fixed image of a police officer in our mind. All brawn and no brain, he is expected to be tough and athletic like Akshay Kumar, look as menacing as a stern Amitabh Bachchan in films and be both rude and ruthless. The upright policeman is a bit of a bore while Hindi films have tirelessly propagated the image of the corrupt cop, who are also lecherous. In real life, there are police officers who are scholarly, who love to sing, write poems or play a musical instrument. Kishore Kunal, a Sanskrit scholar, could recite chapter and verse from the vedas. Director-general of Bihar police V.P. Jain liked his golf and his drink, but was innovative in his approach to policing. Vishwa Ranjan,an IPS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre, is not only a poet and a painter, but also a bibliophile. Rakesh Jaruhar, now in Jharkhand, would have done academics proud. In short there are any number of police officers who are refined, erudite and abhor violence. It is also difficult to imagine the suave deputy managing director of Tata Steel A.N. Singh a former police officer, mouthing obscenities or beating the shit out of goons.

But then you also have police officers like the charismatic Ajay Kumar. A doctor who opted for the police service and later resigned to serve the Tatas at Jamshedpur for some time, he was handsome enough to sweep women off their feet. Every time he would go to the women?s college for some function (even teachers would fall over each other to invite him), he would get a hysterical ovation. But Kumar was suspected, if not known, to be a cold-blooded killer. In fact the then director general of police once confided that he had asked the hunk whether the latter could ever sleep well. Kumar himself had once admitted to this writer that he had bumped off several ?criminals? and justified his act by arguing that all of them would have been let off by the courts. This writer still remembers the example the officer offered. He named a criminal who had allegedly dragged a Bengali girl out of a puja pandal and raped her. Months later the criminal died, shot by Kumar. The officer?s attempt to play on the word Bengali was amusing because he was obviously offering an example that he thought would meet with this writer?s approval. Not that he needed anyone?s approval but he was trying to be polite because we were all socialising at the house of a common friend. The Telegraph had played a role in the eighties in doggedly pursuing the investigation into the death at Gua of a tribal, Bidar Nag,in police custody. He was beaten up in the bazaar, tied to a jeep and driven to the police station by DSP Deepak Verma. Nag began vomitting blood in the lock-up and died the same night in police custody. Lalit Vijay Singh, who happened to be the regional IG of police at Ranchi, eventually got the government to sanction Verma?s prosecution on the charge of murder. A warrant of arrest was issued but Verma managed to get anticipatory bail. He not only weathered the storm but was also promoted to the Indian Police Service. How much his prosecution, and subsequent promotion, was due to the well-known rivalry between L.V. Singh and Dinesh Nandan Sahay, another pillar of Bihar police, is anybody?s guess.

Verma, till last week the SP in Giridih, has been in the news of late for his suspected involvement in the assassination of the popular MLA, Mahendra Singh, and earlier the Hazaribagh lawyer, Prashant Sahay. Both Sahay and Singh had accused the officer of staging fake encounters and usurping money recovered in raids to Naxalite hideouts. While a thorough investigation alone can unravel the truth, it is doubtful if the investigation will ever reach a conclusion. If the man could get acquitted in the Gua case, where he committed the crime himself and in full view of hundreds of people, one cannot underestimate his ability to wriggle out of the current charges, which are backed by very little evidence so far except the few circumstantial pointers. It would appear that those who could have helped the investigation have been silenced.

Ajay Kumars and Deepak Vermas are part of the police and get away with murder because the establishment thinks they are useful and brave. Society looks up to them as role models, while friends and relatives revel in enjoying the perks of office. Ranchi has a number of psychiatrists who could be commissioned to carry out an assessment of the mental health of policemen.That could well be a beginning for having a healthy police force.