THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Hard to believe that neither city commissioner Sparjan Kumar nor deputy commissioner Arul R.B. Krishna was on hand to deal with Jishnu Prannoy’s mother Mahija’s emotive agitation near the Police Headquarters on Wednesday. The sordid episode, the latest in a series earning brickbats for the Pinarayi Vijayan Government, owes to a deep rot in the police. There was no input from the Intelligence wing on the possibility of dubious elements sneaking into Ms Mahija’s sit-in. Nor was there any strategizing by senior police officers on the eve of the agitation.
These are seen to have caught the police off guard even as Ms Mahija and family members arrived on an announced programme of agitation in the capital city. In the absence of the commissioner and his deputy on the scene of action, assistant commissioner (cantonment) K.E. Baiju was left to ensure that no agitator picketed the PHQ. “No sit-in in front of the PHQ” was the brief Mr Baiju got from DCP Arun Krishna and he had to handle it with the force at his command. Despite constraints, Mr Baiju removed the family members using “minimal” force in time without allowing outsiders from fomenting further trouble.
What prevented the officers from going into a strategy session the previous evening, aided by live inputs from the special branch, baffles retired officers. A former DGP told DC that such sensitive issues are handled by senior officers and a clear-cut decision is handed down so that middle-level officers do not let the situation slip out of hand and bring bad name to the police and the Government. He said the department should find out why standard operating procedures have not been followed and who were responsible. A senior police officer could have doused the situation, which is what the police is expected to do, by talking to Ms Mahija and her brother and led them in to the PHQ for DGP Loknath Behera to hear them out, said the former police chief. Then it would have been a different story.
