Cops vs cops in Ghaziabad

The unseemly tussle between the police forces of Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh over the custody of a TV anchor, Rohit Ranjan, presents the law enforcement agencies in a bad light. A team of the Chhattisgarh Police, probing allegations that Zee TV had propagated fake news by airing a statement of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a twisted manner, reached Ghaziabad from Raipur on Tuesday morning to arrest Ranjan. The cops from Chhattisgarh, however, were foiled when their UP counterparts took Ranjan into custody for questioning over the same alleged offence, for which an FIR had been lodged in Gautam Buddha Nagar, UP, as well. The Chhattisgarh cops alleged that after they reached Ranjan’s residence, he called up the local police, who whisked him away to a Noida police station, from where he was moved to an undisclosed location.

The Congress has accused Yogi Adityanath’s government of thwarting the investigation into a serious case of doctoring/manipulation of a video clip featuring Gandhi. The UP Police have said it was ‘mere coincidence’ that the cops of the two states reached Ranjan’s residence at the same time. The two police forces are contradicting each other and clearly, one of them is lying — this would not surprise anyone familiar with the way cops operate in our country. This conflict between two police forces — from states governed by the BJP and Congress — is reminiscent of another unedifying tussle, over Delhi BJP youth wing leader Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, among the police forces of Punjab, Delhi and Haryana. That incident raised concerns over police autonomy, the tension between party politics and law enforcement, and cooperative federalism. Tuesday’s conflict underscored these concerns.

The citizens of the country have a right to exemplary policing. They expect the police to investigate complaints in an honest and thorough manner so that prosecutors could get wrongdoers convicted in a court of law. Solving criminal cases must be the highest objective of law enforcement agencies. Public trust in the police is not very high as it is. What happened in the case of Ranjan — after what happened in May in the case of Bagga — would further undermine the citizens’ confidence in the police.