Reporters Diary: Who listens to ‘No sir, you shouldn’t do it’?

CHENNAI: In the notorious tooth-plucking case of IPS officer Balveer Singh, his subordinates were so loyal to him that they assisted him in getting the torture tool-box. The now-suspended cop had picked up a cutting plier from the box and used it to pluck the teeth of a suspect detained at Kallidaikurichi police station in Tirunelveli.

“This was not the case in our time, when we were ASP,” noted a retired DGP who had started his career over 50 years ago. “I used to carry a small cane and used to keep it proudly on my table as a prized procession. Such a stick went well with the uniform.”

He added that he used to have a head constable (in the rank of senior station writer) who’d guide him in decision making. “He used to call me dorai (a name for IPS officers even after the British left the country) and tell me what to do and what not to. He noticed the cane I kept on the table and told me: ‘Dorai, stick is not the tool officers like you should be using. Your tool is a pen. You must observe what’s going on and make sure everything is happening as per the law and give written instructions / memo whenever and wherever necessary. Use of ‘sticks and other things’ will be done by us’.”

Luckily then, there were such senior constables who were ready to say boldly, ‘no sir, you shouldn’t do it’.