The last week’s murder of a 22-year-old man, Chandru, in JJ Nagar police station limits has brought to fore the fissures between the local police and the state machinery. The politicisation of police investigations has become a bone of contention for the Karnataka police.
As per a serving police officer, “The problem of handing over the cases to central agencies with the aim of the making a criminal offence a political issue exists but now, police officers are being targeted to further the ruling party’s political agenda.” This will impact the morale and effectiveness of the force, he warned.
In some investigations which deal with serious organised crimes, the police purposely didn’t charge cases under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act) [UAPA ] so that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) won’t take over the case; instead, cops implemented the Karnataka Control of Organised Crimes Act, 2000 (KCOCA), claimed a senior officer.
Five police officers (including three from the Indian Police Service) in Karnataka, told the HT that even though objections have been raised by the department, the government has not made any changes.
After the news of Chandru’s murder spread, Bengaluru city police commissioner Kamal Pant had called it a case of road rage, however, home minister Araga Jnanendra claimed that he was killed on the account of not speaking Urdu. Later, Jnanendra retracted his statement after police briefed him on the investigation, however, some BJP leaders, led by BJP national general secretary CT Ravi, claimed the minister was pressured to change his statement. Ravi also accused the Bengaluru police commissioner of lying.
A senior IPS officer in the city police, who didn’t want to be named, said that there is an attempt to communalise the incident. “The investigation in the case was quick. The CCTV footage was available and based on questioning, the police were able to track the suspects within hours. The eyewitness also said that the murder took place over two bikes colliding. But just to politicise the case, they are discrediting the police department,” said the officer.
Several police officers claimed that it was not the only case taken away from the local police for political reasons. On March 24, the NIA took over the investigation into the murder of a Bajrang Dal worker in Shivamogga district of Karnataka.
Activist, Harsha, 26, was fatally stabbed on February 20 in Bharti Nagar locality of Shivamogga town. His killing came during a time of heightened communal tension in the state owing to the hijab controversy.
Another senior IPS officer pointed out that the decision to hand over the case to NIA was made after the local police had arrested all the suspects. Karnataka police had named ten people, all Muslims, as accused in the case. “If the local police were unable to crack the case, handing the case over to the CBI or NIA makes sense. But here, the case was handed over after it was detected. The NIA has not made any further arrests either,” the officer said.
When pointed out that the government’s reasoning that how the murder was planned and carried out required the charges under the UAPA and investigation by the NIA, the officer said that the Belagavi murder should also have gone to the NIA then. In October 2021, Karnataka police arrested 10 people for the murder of a Muslim man, 24, whose decapitated body was found 10 days ago on a railway track in Karnataka’s Belagavi district.
Among the arrested are the parents of a woman with whom he was in a relationship. The police confirmed that the parents had given a contract to murder the man to prevent their daughter from marrying him.
“If we are talking about the brutality of a crime and how an organisation was behind it, the Belagavi case had all these elements. The moment a case goes to NIA it becomes a ‘terror’ case. This is pure politicisation of the case. All the work was done by local police, later it became an NIA case,” the officer said.
BJP leaders, however, said that the claims of some police officers are far from the truth. A BJP spokesperson said even the Congress party has handed over cases to the NIA.
“The murder of RSS worker Rudresh, who was hacked to death by PFI workers, was handed to the NIA by the Congress government only. Who gave the suicide case of DSP Ganapathi to the CBI? It was Congress. So, the argument that BJP is handing over cases to central agencies for political gains is baseless,” said BJP state spokesperson Ganesh Karnik. “This is not politicisation. The government is only ensuring that thorough investigation is done in such cases,” he said.
The Congress however, slammed the BJP for using the crimes for political purposes. “In the Harsha murder case, police had found that there was a personnel enmity between him and his attackers. In the Chandru murder case, police clarified that it was the result of an altercation over two bikes colliding. We have no issue with the state police or central agencies probing the matter. The problem is when these crimes are used to create communal tension and the BJP has done it in both cases,” said KPCC working president Eshwar Kandre.
A former intelligence chief of Karnataka police said that the Bengaluru police’s track record in investigating big cases has not always been exemplary. “Two persons, including a journalist and employee of ISRO were arrested on terror charges and were jailed for six months in 2014. Bengaluru police had booked them without any relevant evidence and only when the NIA took over the case, their innocence was proven. So, NIA or any other agency taking over the case is not always political,” said the officer, who also served in the CBI.
