Hyderabad: The legitimacy of 60 per cent of the arrests made by the police in the country is questionable, said Prof. Dr Faizan Mustafa, vice-chancellor of NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, on Monday.
Delivering the 24th K.S. Vyas memorial lecture on ‘Constitution, Human Rights, and Policing’ at the TS Police Academy, Dr Mustafa, said that there has been a discussion recently that some of those arrested were not even citizens, which is due to the lack of awareness of the rights that every citizen possesses.
Referring to the protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Dr Mustafa said, “So much debate is now going on that certain people are not citizens.
The Constitution gives some rights to our citizens, the freedom of speech, freedom of assembly without arms, freedom to form an association.”
He said that the rights under Article 21 were available to citizens and non-citizens. “So, people who have been excluded from NRC have all the rights, right to livelihood, for insta-nce. Right to shelter, right to environment and right to breathe fresh air and similar right to equality, before the law, equal protection of laws. Citizens, non-citizens, and aliens, everybody has these rights,” he added.
“In my last 27 years, I have never felt as overwhelmed when I see the people have really embraced this Constitution. The whole country is reading the preamble. No other country anywhere in the world has ever seen so many people reading the Constitution,” he said.
Dr Mustafa said police officials need to be continuously given awareness training on human rights and suggested that it would help if they had a diploma or degree in law. He recalled that the Telangana State police had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the NALSAR university. “We are creating a new kind of policing in Telangana state. Our police is receiving public support and applause from everywhere,” he said.
He noted that students were unhappy about the recent instances of use of police force in the universities in Delhi and Aligarh. “It may be difficult for me to justify the use of police force in the hostels, in the library of the university. In both cases the police did not file the FIRs. But, the Delhi police, I believe has done a disservice to its reputation by inaction in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the slow progress of the investigation, so far,” he said.
Speaking at the event earlier, DGP, M. Mahendar Reddy, said that the modernisation and innovations in policing started during the period of the late K.S. Vyas, who formed the Greyhounds that received huge applause across the country for its performance. “The Telangana state police are abiding by the law and are enforcing it,” he added.
