After court strictures against Delhi Police in riots case, heads should roll from the top down

Any self-respecting police force would have used its best officers to prove the charges levelled, true or false, against the accused men. But the Delhi Police is without the mojo it used to have once, long ago. Especially after Amit Shah got charge of the Union Home Ministry in 2019. The Delhi Police serves the politicians who lord over it rather than the people of Delhi. In fact, the Delhi Police works in the shadow of the Union Home Ministry. The Delhi Police is caught in a systemic fault-line, and no amount of screaming and shouting can undo the knot.

The BJP, because it’s in power at the Centre, is forever parading the benefits of a “double-engine” government for the national Capital. However, the Delhi electorate has chosen not to give the BJP the ‘state” of Delhi and, therefore, without the “double-engine”, the Modi Government makes sure that the Delhi Police remains at its beck and call. In situations like the northeast Delhi riots, it’s advantage the Union government, ergo the BJP.

But, unlike the AAP Government, the courts aren’t helpless. If a wrong is perpetrated, India’s courts have for the most part delivered justice. So, it’s that the Delhi court freed three accused in one of the 2020 northeast Delhi riots cases, one of them charged with “looting and damaging” a shop.