A brave officer

I am posting a message from Ashish Gupta, sent to me by a top senior revenue service officer. It has already been forwarded to a few hundred people, so I assume there is nothing confidential about it.

Gupta, like my other police friends expresses great anguish about the death of Ashok Kamte in the terror attacks on Mumbai in November. It is a rare man who evokes such respect and admiration from his fellow officers… Kamte’s demise is truly a loss and it is a bigger tragedy that many of us have got to know about this brave, sincere but low profile officer only after he is no more with us.

But I post this, not as a tribute to Ashok Kamte – I expect my police friends to take the trouble to write about him rather than merely talk about their feelings.
I am posting Gupta’s message because he is currently posted in the PMO and writes movingly about force and the need to understand the circumstances in which they work.

I agree with Gupta when he says the police force is hated (or at least distrusted by the ordinary person today). They are seen as people who will fix anything for a price. And why not, they would think. If the going rate for a constable’s job is Rs two lakhs and each transfer, especially to lucrative postings costs a lot of money, why would they waste time protecting the people?

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