The ongoing tussle between Tajinder Bagga and the AAP-led Punjab government is in the limelight again. In a major relief to the BYJM leader, the Punjab & Haryana High Court on Tuesday granted interim relief of stay on arrest to Bagga till July 5. This comes as a huge setback to the AAP as well as the Punjab Police which landed itself into a bizarre confrontation with the police forces of Haryana and Delhi.
All that the country seems to be talking about for the past few days is BYJM leader Tajinder Bagga’s dramatic arrest by Punjab Police in Delhi and an even more dramatic release from Kurukshetra, the historical city where the Mahabharata war was fought thousands of years ago.
This time around the Delhi Police, Haryana Police and Punjab Police faced off at the same venue. The face-off was just as embarrassing as it was dramatic. The Punjab Police team had to go empty-handed after it was intercepted by Haryana Police at Kurukshetra and Tajinder Bagga was escorted back to Delhi by the Delhi Police.
Elephant in the room
You would have already read about this dramatic event, perhaps multiple times. But now, it is time to address the elephant in the room- the need for police reforms. The present incident has set the context and stage for police reforms, especially when it comes to politicisation of interstate investigations and arrests.
In Tajinder Bagga’s case, the Delhi Police claims that the due process for interstate arrests wasn’t followed. This is why a kidnapping case was also registered by the Delhi Police against the Punjab Police team. On the other hand, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) claimed that Delhi and Haryana cops acted unconstitutionally.
In such circumstances, there is at least a need to understand if the due process was disregarded.
Was the procedure followed?
Tajinder Bagga was arrested by the Punjab Police in Delhi’s Janakpuri and that too without a warrant. There is admittedly no procedure in India’s criminal procedure law that regulates interstate arrests without a warrant.
However, it should not be taken to mean that the procedure of interstate arrests without a warrant can be arbitrary, capricious and devoid of due process. In fact, in the 2019 case of Sandeep Kumar v State, the Delhi High Court had laid down certain procedural safeguards in case of interstate arrests including prior permission of higher/ superior officers in writing to go out of their own states, recording reasons in writing unless there is an emergent situation, contacting the local police station, giving the arrested person an opportunity of consulting his lawyer before being taken out of the state and also visiting the local police station while returning after the arrest.
In a statement, Mohali DSP (City-1) Sukhnaaz Singh told The Tribune, “A police team was sent from Mohali to Delhi last night. A team arrested them today morning and simultaneously, another team reached the police station concerned in Delhi to inform local cops. The entire process has been video-recorded. Although Bagga resisted arrest, no force was used against him or his father.”
If sending a team simultaneously was the only procedure that the Punjab Police followed, it doesn’t amount to following the due process in totality. It is true that the precedent of a High Court is applicable only upon its own territory. However, the guidelines laid down by the Delhi High Court were essentially related to individual liberty and natural justice. You would therefore expect every police force including the Punjab Police to follow such guidelines, at least while making an arrest in Delhi.
Politicisation of police forces
What makes Tajinder Bagga’s case different is the fact that he was arrested for writing a tweet that allegedly amounted to making provocative statements, promoting enmity and criminal intimidation.
Now, if the country’s police forces start acting on all provocative tweets being made on social media, perhaps hundreds of thousands of social media users will have to be jailed. This is probably the reply that an ordinary citizen would get if he approaches a police station to complain about a tweet made against him.
More importantly, it is the procedural ease that stands out in this case. If a common citizen tries to lodge an FIR in one city for a tweet made in some other city, he is likely to be turned away and told that the police station doesn’t have the jurisdiction to investigate. It was due to this reason that the concept of ‘zero FIR’ was brought in.
Yet, when a complaint was lodged against Bagga in Mohali, the criminal machinery suddenly came into motion and even an attempt was made to take the BYJM leader into custody.
This is exactly why discussing police reforms becomes important. Firstly, there is this issue of excessive control of state governments over police forces. Left to themselves, police officers would perhaps be more concerned about law and order and security issues than a tweet by some individual in some other city. The police forces should be independent institutions serving the citizens instead of being made into political tools.
Secondly, the criminal justice system allows investigation of an interstate offence by the police, a provision that can be easily misused. Once an investigation is launched, it cannot be questioned in the courts on grounds of lack of territorial jurisdiction. This is supposed to allow unhindered administration of criminal justice, but there will always be some overenthusiastic party workers who will take exception to some remark made against their party leader in another state and try to get the police to sneak in as a means of teaching the critic a lesson.
And then, being arrested by the police force of another state creates different kinds of hardships. The arrested accused is left in relatively unfamiliar territory and then local lawyers also have to be arranged. The situation can get worse when vindictive arrests are made and due process becomes the biggest casualty.
The Tajinder Bagga case is a dramatic event in Indian policing. For the time being, he has been granted interim relief of stay on arrest till July 5. But the issue goes beyond Bagga himself and makes a desperate call for rolling out police reforms.
Akshay Narang is a columnist who writes about international affairs and developments in the defence sector. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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