All for 20 marks and a constable’s cap

At a stretch between Vikhroli and Ghatkopar, at three separate spots named A, B and C, the Mumbai police constabulary recruitment drive is on its last turn, a 5-km run for the final mark sheet in ‘physical’. The city’s police force will recruit 2,750 constables in its annual drive this year, which includes physical test followed by written-with aspirant ratio at 15 for every seat. Another 300 seats are reserved on compassionate grounds for children of police officers who died on duty. This year, the run, an otherwise inconspicuous activity, much like the location in which it is held – the service road stretch in the eastern suburbs adjoining the Eastern Express Highway – has been hauled by the Bombay High Court as ‘human rights violation’ after five aspirants died on the race track.

The police say they are saddened, but constabulary staff on the ground grouse that the distance and timing of the run is inhuman. “The temperature on June 11 was well over 30 degree Celsius,” said a constable, when two aspirants were carted out. Male candidates with 165 cm height and chest size 79 (deflated), 84 (expanded) are eligible for the posts.

The five-km run, designed as a halfway loop, comes after a week full of exercises — high jump, 100 m running, shot put and regimen pull-ups — all for 20 marks each. Aspirants who clock the race in less than 25 minutes get 20 marks; a minute less gets 18 marks, and so on, with those clocking 30 minutes managing to score just 10 marks. Anyone exceeding the time limit gets a zero, with a police patrol vehicle following the racers, pulling them off the track. Dr Ravi Chavan from Nagpada Police Hospital, who was at the spot when Gahininath Latpate fell down at 4.5 km, says all the deaths took place before the sun went up. “Most come from poor backgrounds. They are frail and find it hard to adjust to the humid conditions,” says Chavan. He added that most of them didn’t even have money to meet their expenses on the first two days.

Outside the medical tent, Gofne’s “new best friend”, Sandeep Ramesh Patil (24), is trudging around. Patil, a peanut vendor in Jalgaon, says he applied for the post after he saw large font sized posters at Jalgaon bus depot calling to join the police force. Since June 10, he says he is “just walking on most evenings, oblivious to his surroundings”, tired after physical tests. Upset that he was wrongly deprived of a mark in the race, he hasn’t had a square meal since June 14 — after he spent all his money on the cheapest rice plates. Along with others, Patil has parked himself in the bushes along the highway. “I could not sleep as traffic is so noisy even in the middle of the night,” he said.

Another aspirant, Ganesh Rane (19), will have to wait for his marks in the evening run. From Karad in Sattara, son of a soyabean farmer, Rane says he is the only hope for his two younger sisters. “After hearing about the casualties, my father has been calling twice a day to check if I am alive. He keeps asking if my race is over,” he says. Around 90 per cent of the aspirants come from far-away rural areas—looking for security and a government job. Rane hasn’t eaten anything substantial for the past two days as he spent his last few monies on a train ride to town and back, picking a vada pav in the middle and finishing the day at Gateway of India. “I don’t know if ever I will have the money to travel to the city again,” he adds. Rohit Umavat (21), a plumber’s son from Nashik, took Rs 10,000 from his father’s savings to join a private tuition school for the recruitment tests. “I wasn’t worried of the race as I kept picking pace in my school. For many, here, it is their first. I was thinking of the family budget. We will have to adjust a full year, if I fail the entrance. Just the thought kept me running,” he says.

There are others who are here for their second attempt. Ramesh Mahamune (23) from Parbhani joined the force and even worked for 10 days as a constable in Gadchiroli in 2011, before the attacks scared his family and he was called back. “Poverty is scarier than death for them now and they sent me again saying I should give it another shot. We are in real dire state,” he says.