June 18, 2009: Wanted in nine cases of dacoity, loot and murder, dacoit Ghanshyam Kewat is trapped in a deserted house at Jamauli village in Chitrakoot district. Armed and dangerous, Kewat challenges the dozen-strong state police team that tracks him down. Unable to gain entry into the house or shoot Kewat, the team retreats. A company of the Provincial Armed Constabulary is called in, but these 100 jawans are unable to liquidate Kewat.
On the third day, the police rework their strategy under the command of an Additional Director General, pressing an earthmover into the assault. Kewat, whose stamina seems endless, finally breaks cover and runs, and is finally shot
dead in a rainwater channel. It has taken 400 policemen, 52 hours and an earthmover to eliminate the dacoit. Four policemen are dead, six injured.
April 18, 2012: Historysheeters Dhiraj Singh and Vikas Singh along with two other unknown criminals are intercepted and chased by a local police and Gorakhpur Special Operations Group team in Mau district. Their accomplices having slipped away during the chase, the two desperados barge into a house in Mathia village. They fire at the policemen, killing Mau city SHO Govind Singh. The encounter continues for four hours, and the criminals are eliminated only when police commandos from Varanasi arrive. The owner of the house is killed during the encounter.
These two incidents showcase the inefficiency of the 4 lakh-strong Uttar Pradesh Police, one of the world’s largest security forces. Simply put, the Uttar Pradesh Police is flabby, poorly trained and, when it comes to the crunch, ineffective. The rot doesn’t affect just the aam aadmi: in the last 15 years, more than two dozen MLAs, former MPs, ministers and MLAs have been killed by their rivals in politics and in the underworld, their personal security guards unable to protect them.
And it’s a holy cow. No critical assessments have been performed, and any talk of quantifying fitness levels is just as quickly brushed under the carpet. In 2011, the then Mayawati government conducted physical tests of constables for their promotion to head constables. The tests were a killer: four constables died during running, six suffered heart attacks, and a number of them fainted on the ground. The physical tests were stopped immediately by the government, but the damage had been done, and the poor fitness levels of the state’s policemen exposed. A couple of years before this incident, then Governor T V Rajeshwar, himself a former Indian Police Service officer, had commented on the bulging khaki middles and asked the state government to ensure their fitness. As is obvious from the 2011 fitness nightmare, not much was done by way of following those directions.
Most of the police and personal security officers deployed to protect VVIPs, including the chief minister and the former chief ministers, are unfit and untrained, says a Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police on condition of anonymity. Perhaps the most high-profile example of this state of affairs was that of Padam Singh, Mayawati’s personal security officer who failed both the firing and physical test in 2010. Padam Singh has since retired from service, but continues to be retained by the former chief minister. And therein lies the rub, for most VVIPs are prone to use personal securitymen as assistants, and sometimes even like peons. Padam Singh’s hand-polishing of Mayawati’s dusty sandals in public in 2011 was the shocker that underlined this enervating trend.
“Despite repeated reminders by the Training Wing of the Uttar Pradesh Police, the VVIPs don’t send their security personnel for upgradation of training or for refresher courses. If they do, they usually ask department officials to clear them in the tests even if they fail,” says one DIG-rank officer who has headed the Training Wing of the state police. He adds that the many of the security personnel deployed with VVIPs and VIPs turn into political activists. “We cannot change these unfit security personnel because the government has issued written instructions that the police department would provide security personnel of their choice. We are helpless. The politicians demand their security staff of their own caste,” says the DIG, stressing that one of the biggest police forces in the world does not have a regular and professional training schedule. “The Bureau of Police Research and Development in Delhi frames the rules and regulations for police training, fitness and refresher programmes. But it is not followed in Uttar Pradesh,” says another senior officer posted in the Training Wing.
The rot extends to firearms training. A police constable should be given about 80 cartridges a year for firing practice, but Uttar Pradesh’s policemen do not get more than a dozen. “There is a substantial number of police personnel who have not participated in training and refresher courses for years. They cannot crawl, they cannot conceal themselves in an ambush operation and they cannot even run away for their own safety,” says a senior police officer, adding that most of the police firing ranges in Lucknow, Varanasi, Banda, Aligarh and other districts have been encroached upon by local inhabitants.
Such a large police force needs at least 35 training schools for its constables, but it has just five. Similarly it needs six police training colleges for sub-inspectors and above, but it has two. As for tactical training centres, Uttar Pradesh has none. Apparently, money isn’t the issue. The Centre had released adequate funds for police modernisation but they mostly lapsed on March 31 because they were not used. Worse, the issue didn’t raise any eyebrows in the state.
Ad hoc recruitment is another bugbear. The previous government recruited 35,000 constables while the total capacity for training is not even 12,000. As a result, parts of the essential training had to be outsourced, and some of the constables are believed to have completed their training only on papers. “I am sure a number of the recruits cannot properly handle a firearm. There is no training in Uttar Pradesh for handling grenades,” says a police officer.
Khaki seems to have a darker future in Uttar Pradesh unless drastic and immediate action is taken.