Crime graph up: Yogi govt unable to deal with BJP leaders misbehaving with cops
Between 2012 and 2015, Uttar Pradesh has witnessed 622 cases where policemen have been attacked by criminals and politicians. The crime situation under the Akhilesh Yadav government was dismal and disappointing, but the new Yogi Adityanath government seems to be no better.
The new government, it seems, wants to carry forward the Samajwadi Party’s 'legacy' and is in a hurry to match those numbers. To begin with, only Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and their relatives have so far assaulted or threatened policemen – and clearly, this is a teaser of things to come.
The spiralling number of such cases within a month of the BJP’s massive electoral victory and despite Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s warning party leaders to behave responsibly is not a happy augury.
Early this month some policemen on duty stopped the car being driven by Meerut BJP leader Sanjay Tyagi’s son as it had dark films and flaunted a hooter. While dark films on car windows are proscribed, hooters too cannot be used by all and sundry.
Instead of agreeing to remove the film and hooter, the man allegedly got into a scuffle with the policemen after informing his father. On reaching the spot, Sanjay Tyagi too reportedly assaulted the cops and pulled his son out of the police vehicle.
In another incident in Ghaziabad, a man who claimed to be a relative of UP’s tourism minister Rita Bahuguna Joshi threatened and misbehaved with cops.
In March, nephew of Chetram, the BJP MLA from Puwayan in Shahjehanpur, assaulted a woman sub-inspector who stopped his vehicle to check his car’s papers.
The MLA from Hardoi’s Swaijpur Assembly constituency, Manvendra Pratap Singh, joined the list of BJP leaders who began flexing their muscles after their party was voted to power.
Singh was blunt when he threatened Arvind Verma, the Circle Officer of Shahbad, to mend his ways as the BJP was now in power. In the video of the MLA’s conversation with the police officer which went viral, Singh can be heard abusing Verma and warning him of dire consequences.
The people’s representative was fuming because some his boys had been detained after a clash and he wanted Verma to release them. The officer tried to explain that they were detained by the Dial-100 team over which he had no jurisdiction.
The list doesn’t end here.
In Bareilly’s Bahedi, the MLA Chandra Pal’s cronies ransacked a police station and got their supporters out. These supporters had been detained after they clashed with Bahujan Samaj Party’s followers.
Pal reportedly told the cops to clear the area of “SP and BSP goons.”
Cops in Mirzapur also had to face a local BJP leader’s ire after taking action against his kin. The cops were told to submit to the legislator’s diktat as his party was now in power.
What is the CM doing?
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has not made any changes in the police set-up but nearly 100 policemen have been suspended in a crackdown following a directive from the Director General of Police Javeed Ahmed to “identify black sheep in the police force”.
Seven inspectors were suspended in Lucknow.
The directive was issued hours after Adityanath assumed office. And the directive did not explain what it meant by “black sheep”, but it was interpreted as those who had links with criminals.
The Adityanath government also has more to deal with besides just the high-handedness and unruly behaviour of BJP leaders. Crime has been another disturbing point for the government after heists in jewellery stores in Varanasi and a bank in Faizabad.
Former IAS officer SP Singh said that he found no change in the crime situation compared to what existed under the Akhilesh government. But, he was willing to give some more time to improve the situation.
BJP national president Amit Shah had claimed during the election campaign that crime in UP increases under non-BJP governments. It's been a month the BJP government has taken over UP, but nothing has changed.
First published: 16 April 2017, 19:04 IST