Delhi cops hold rare protest outside police headquarters

Dozens of
police personnel marched to the Delhi police headquarters on Tuesday morning to
protest their leadership’s handling of recent instances of policemen being
assaulted during clashes with lawyers since Saturday.

The protest
by police personnel is a rare sight, driven by what they said was the need to
remind their senior officers to stand united and deal with the assault against
the men in Khaki.

They didn’t
raise slogans, create any mess or make any demands but wore black bands on
their arms and hoped to get the message across. Some of them did carry placards
that asked for justice and underscored their low morale.

“How is the
Josh? Low, Sir”, one placard read, inspired by the dialogue in the movie,
Surgical Strike, that was also invoked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to
stress the high morale among security personnel and the public after the 2016
strike on terror pads in Pakistan.

No senior
Delhi Police officer has issued a statement on the protest by their juniors.

There were
many incidents of policemen being allegedly beaten up by lawyers on Monday, the
first day of lawyers’ strike over their clash with the police. A video showed a
constable in uniform being repeatedly slapped and elbowed by lawyers outside
the Saket court. All that the policeman could do was escape on his motorcycle.

The lawyers
on Monday had also allegedly attacked many others as well, including
journalists, litigants, drivers. The police chose to watch from a safe
distance. At Tis Hazari court, some policemen kept themselves locked in the
court’s lock-up.

Policemen
attending the protest said that they expected their seniors to stand by them in
these times. “ Hardly any senior officer even visited our colleagues injured in
the clash with lawyers,” said a policeman, refusing to identify himself.

Aslam Khan,
an IPS officer who has served in the national capital in the past, took to
Twitter to question the Delhi Police’s response to the assaults on policemen.
“Khaki going down to the worse,” she tweeted while sharing the video of a
policeman getting beaten up.

Neeraj
Kumar, the former police commissioner, said the video of the policeman being
beaten up gave the impression that “there is no rule of law and the police are
people meant to be beaten up”.