Making police independent of political executive is a real struggle much like the struggle for independence, Bombay High Court judge Justice Gautam Patel said on Friday.

He said that having control over the police force gives immense power and that political executive will not relinquish the same easily.

“There is so much reluctance. We must plan on that reluctance. After all, there are few things as powerful and as terrible in their power as control over an entire police force. That power is not likely to be relinquished or ceded easily. And that is the real struggle, a sort of independence struggle of its own: striving for an impartial and independent police form, able to say, rank and file 'no' to a political demand, and always accountable and answerable only to the rule of law,” the judge said.

Justice Patel was speaking at the Indian Police Foundation Annual Day & Police Reforms Day Event at Mumbai.

In his address, Justice Patel remarked that the 2006 judgement of the Supreme Court in the Prakash Singh case which dealt with issues concerning police reforms, was a missed opportunity as it took a very narrow approach to the issue.

After taking recommendations from the National Police Commission, the Supreme Court had in 2006 issued certain directives on the role of police as a law enforcement agency and a protector of citizen rights.

However, Justice Patel opined that the judgment was a missed opportunity as any talk of police reform confined to people in formal police services missed the wider social context.

“The focus was perhaps too narrow, only on police reforms. There is a much wider dialogue, a conversation, that we must have. Any talk of police reforms confined to the people in the formal police services is stripped of the much wider and more essential social context. How do we reform the police without reforming ourselves? I do believe that police reforms cannot be seen in isolation or in a separate box,” the judge opined.

One aspect that determined how we view police force was public impatience with the established processes of administration of law.

He stressed that citizens found it to be too slow and unpredictable and did not keep up with the broader social desires. 

“We believe as members of a civil society that justice should be swift, righteous and without mercy. If courts and judges cannot be trusted or relied on to do this, then surely there is nothing wrong if the men and women in khaki step into the breach to do that which we believe must be done. Therefore when a rape accused is killed in an ‘encounter’ while allegedly trying to flee from an entire squadron of police, we think this is perfectly all right and that justice has been served,” the judge opined. 

He cited the movie Singham to prove that this impatience was deeply embedded in our thoughts as a society, which reflected in the cinema.

“Consider how deeply pervasive this view is and how strongly it is reflected in our popular culture; most of all in Indian cinema. They accuse courts of letting the guilty off. What is the answer? The hero cop delivers justice single-handedly. I want you all to think of Singham here and especially that climax scene where the entire force descends on the politician played by Prakash Raj. His dialogue really feeds into this mythology and valorizes unilateral police action,” Justice Patel recounted.

He said the citizens have to ideally keep their impatience in check as the processes that the police and courts have to follow is to uphold the cardinal principle of individual liberty. But due to impatience, citizens overlook the fact that there is no substitute for this system, he said.

“If liberty of the individual is paramount, if adjudication has to be fair and not snap, then this is the only possible process to achieve adherence and fidelity to governance by the rule of law. If we abandon this process and if we start taking shortcuts, we subvert the rule of law,” the judge said.