Police dilemma - Facilitators, touts

ALLAHABAD: Call them facilitators, middlemen or simply brand them as touts. The fact remains that an overwhelming presence of touts in police stations has manifested itself in a crisis which the police personnel themselves are finding hard to handle. The reason: A majority of touts are actually police informers who have easy access to the police stations, besides sharing a bonhomie with the police station staff.
A quick recap of cases of imposters disguised as police personnel in the recent past is proof enough of the fact that these informer-turned-touts have now devised a new strategy to make their business flourish and thereby eliminate expenses incurred in the middle chain -- the actual police personal that is !
Instead of waiting for police personnel to nab miscreants and petty thieves, the touts have donned the role of custodians of law and have started walking on the streets laying hand upon the gullible lot and extracting handsome amounts of money after terrorising them about the after effects of landing in jail.
While DIG Chandraprakash categorically asserts that there is only one Special Operation Group (SOG) team in the district, an overwhelming presence of SOG and STF personnel on the streets is a fact meekly acknowledged by the SOG personnel who express inability to pin down the culprits in absence of concrete evidence. The reason once again remains that the touts, having spent considerable amount of time in the company of police personnel, taking care of their needs in the process, are well versed with the style of police functioning and their trade secrets. They rarely leave lose ends for the police being able to trace them.
Incidentally, presence of touts at police stations is a universally accepted fact. However, when a senior official lays emphasis upon the need of completely doing away with the practice, it certainly creates hopes in the mind of public that perhaps things are headed in the right direction and at last the police would become people friendly !
IG (zone) Surya Kumar Shukla's terse comments about the overwhelming presence of touts at police stations have created a flutter amongst the lower rung officials. Shukla observed that people dislike venturing into a police station to narrate their tale of woe because of the unbecoming behaviour of the subordinate staff including guard, deewan and munshi. This attitude calls for an immediate and drastic change, the official added.
Even the relevance of Thana Diwas needs to be understood in the right perspective, he felt. According to the IG, Thana Diwas have failed to fulfil their objectives on two counts.
First, the importance accorded to touts at the police stations which portray a negative image about the entire police force. Once a tout is spotted mingling with the station staff, the first impression a visitor gathers is that touts hold sway at the police station and it is safer to contact the touts instead of officer concerned for redressal of grievance. Ironically, the redressal in whatever form comes directly from the police officer and not the tout but still the victim is all praises about the tout.
The second reason for Thana Diwas failing to meet its desired objective is the behaviour meted out to a complainant on part of the staff present at the police station. The pre-conceived notion in the minds of police personnel that the complainant is a defaulter, a habitual offender and must have committed something wrong before approaching the police station needs to be done away with, the IG observed.
He suggests that a courteous behaviour with the complainant can work wonders and the investigating officer would have all the liberty to carry out impartial investigations and there would be no extraneous pressures upon him as he has given a patient hearing to the complainant who has left the station completely satisfied. More often than not, ���sifarish' (recommendation) is made once the station staff have not heard the full version of the complainant, the officer opined.