DailyPost 2353
CRIMINAL INFORMATION – NO ONE’S JOB
Providing criminal information is no one’s job. We have been talking of nationalism and duties of a citizen ad nauseum, how many of us have provided any criminal information which we are in clear knowledge of, to the police, or the other legal authority, in our whole lifetime. Are the law enforcement, investigative and the intelligence agencies are pitted against the whole population, inclusive of people in power and the elected representatives. Is it not only a battle against crime or also against a population which supports crimes directly or indirectly and an establishment that is proactively indifferent, at its very best. Why every battle against crime become a lone one even inside police organizations.
It might sound strange, but it has turned out to be a battle for the police with hands tied. Not getting any support is just one side of the story, they cannot trudge on any one’s legal shoes, have to maintain the highest civilizational professional behaviour, comply to myriad of legal provisions, pass through above reasonable doubt touchstone and come out with flying colors. Try this sort of process on any other organization and professional group, and you would find them winding up their shop in no time. The epitome of this hanging in the mid-air criminal information support system is that when you try and find out as to how many amongst the police and other agencies are ready to share criminal information amongst themselves in a freewheeling manner, you would barely find anyone.
Leaving aside personally gathered information or having facts within their knowledge, they are not even ready to share professional institutional information. As the flow of information is completely unreliable, they best way is to make the best of whatever little you have. Even huge rewards are not able to attract the right information, which is called as actionable intelligence. When money changes hands, no one knows in an office, even when it has become the system, when money is paid during the elections, no party or office bearer knows of it, what an irony of human existence. The issue has gone way beyond not providing criminal intelligence, a shell is created within which everything is known to shameless and accepted, but has a sensor based closure, once anything aberrant or dangerous is smelt.
What a society we have created, supposedly a democratic one, where democratic institutions find so difficult to fend for themselves, if an objective and impact making action is taken. They have to keep defending till the cows come home. No one has been able to open Black Box of action related decision making when transparency is what democratic LEAs and investigative agencies vouch for. There are times by some queer circumstances when all evidence is out in the open and there is nobody to investigate. Stranger when police and large number of agencies have suo motto powers. What percentage of criminal intelligence remains unknown to all our elected representatives and their hangers on? Whatever is known as an answer to this question, of it if even one percent is shared with Police and concerned agencies, the face of the country would have been different today. Might be we would have been able to prevent most of our avoidable tragedies, from sanding mining to political killings and beyond.
LIVING WITH CRIMINAL INTELLIGENCE IS THE BEGINNING OF CRIMINALITY. A SOCIETY NUMBED.
Sanjay Sahay