In the front office of Star of Mysore hangs a framed quotation by Leo Tolstoy: “If you feel pain, you are alive. If you feel other people’s pain, you are a human being.”

Looking at yesterday’s front page, I was left with a haunting question: Are our public servants capable of feeling another person’s pain?

The answer, judging by yesterday’s SOM, is a big NO.

Public servants in India are seldom humane.

What happened to Rajesh is not merely heartbreaking. It is terrifying and it should send shivers down the spine of every law-abiding citizen in Mysuru.

Not simply because an innocent man was allegedly tortured into confessing to a murder he did not commit, but because this is not the first time such a tragedy has unfolded in our backyard.

Last year, Suresh walked into a Police Station to report his wife missing. Instead, he was forced to identify a skeleton as that of his wife, then tied up, suspended upside down and beaten until he confessed to murdering her!

Think about that. A man walks into a Police Station seeking help and is walked off to jail, branded a murderer; his children are orphaned and a family is destroyed. All in one day, by one Police Station led by one Police Officer. 

Similarly, in yesterday’s case of Rajesh, his apparent crime? Being kind.

Rajesh lent his mobile phone to a distressed woman, Manju, who wanted to call home. Two years later, her father filed a murder complaint against Rajesh and he was taken into custody based on that phone call and allegedly tortured into confessing to a murder where there was none!

Despite there being no apparent evidence of murder beyond the fact that he had lent her his phone, he remained behind bars. It took an intervention by the High Court, two years later, for him to obtain bail. The case continues.

This is not simply incompetence. This is cruelty. This is inhumane.

How can the Police Service, meant to protect and serve, fall so far below the minimum threshold of empathy and human kindness?

The answer is… Because when khaki is in trouble, khadi protects it.

Today, many mock the Indian Police Service (IPS) as the Indian Political Service. Unfortunately, it’s not far from the truth.

Our Police Force has become willing participants in political machinations. The reasons are three: Money, post-retirement political career and caste politics.

As Karnataka High Court Justice R. Devdas observed, “Plum postings are assigned for monetary considerations.”

When a Police posting becomes an investment, the temptation to recover that investment will take precedence over the duty to deliver justice.

Then there is the promise of a post-retirement political career. Names of Police Officers like Shankar Bidari, H.T. Sangliana, L. Revannasiddaiah and Abdul Azeem come to mind. 

So, where does their loyalty lie? With the law or their future political benefactors?

Finally, there is caste. Police appointments are increasingly caste-aligned. Political parties reward Officers of their caste or ideology. In such a system, justice naturally is the first casualty.

That is why in India, when a law-abiding citizen sees a Police Officer, he is fearful and scared. But when a criminal sees a Police Officer, he is happy and relieved, for he knows a deal can indeed be struck and he’ll be off the hook. What a tragedy!

In our country, personnel who deal with law and order have been given too much power with absolutely no accountability.

It was the former Chief Justice of India (CJI) T.S. Thakur who said: “As long as the judiciary exists, people have nothing to fear.”

But then, as long as we have Judges who don’t stick to facts, as long as we have Police who only care about conviction instead of the truth, we have a lot to fear.

It’s time to remind Police Officers that a Police uniform is not a licence to inflict pain. It is a responsibility to prevent it. Only punishing erring officers will register this message.

The tragedy of Rajesh and Suresh is a warning to the rest of us. Today, it is them. Tomorrow, it could be us.

If the government does not correct this system, a parallel justice system will arise. 

When citizens lose faith in the Police and the Courts, they begin looking elsewhere for justice.

That is when the real danger begins, when the underworld offers what the State has failed to provide – first it’ll be justice, then it’ll be vengeance and then they will become the law.

Law-makers and law-keepers be warned. 

P.S.: Where are the human rights warriors? Where are the Gen Zs who hate injustice? Where are the vociferous leftists who are hyper-sensitive to injustice? Where are the communist unions when their own, a poor, daily wager Rajesh’s life and family, is destroyed?

Mysuru, the cultured city, now has drug factories which are operating right under the nose of our Police but are busted by the Police from other States!

In Mysuru, murder is now a common occurrence, that too in broad daylight and the Police are torturing innocents to get confessions for murder they did not commit.

Yet why no one is asking questions of the Home Minister? No call for his resignation? Where are the justice warriors and student unions? Guess the poor have no money to pay for a protest.

Worse, where the hell is the Opposition party. The BJP? Busy with real estate and adjustment politics?

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