Activists rally around Mohini Giri, want police reforms

Rights activists on Saturday rallied around former National Commission for Women chairperson, V. Mohini Giri, who was attacked when she tried to prevent a girl from being molested in South Delhi last week.

Dr. Giri, the chairperson of the Guild of Service, said she saw a girl being assaulted by a group of young men and decided to intervene. The attackers then turned on the 76-year-old social activist. To make matters worse, she said a passing Police Control Room van as well as local policemen refused to help her. One of the police personnel even verbally abused her.

Dr. Giri wrote to Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, but as of Saturday evening she had not got any response and no FIR had been registered.

At Saturday’s meeting, human rights activists, women’s NGOs, and former and serving civil servants launched their struggle for police reform. Dr. Giri said: “I’m not saying that if it could happen to me, it could happen to someone else. I am saying that it is happening to all of us every day across the country.”

The activists agreed that there was a need to take Dr. Giri’s incident and turn it into a catalyst for change in the law and order situation today.

Constitutional law expert Dr. P.P. Rao said there has been a “collapse of honest administration”, but civil society could engage the government in a dialogue to get it back on track.

Addressing the gathering, Supreme Court lawyer and founder of the Human Rights Law Network, Colin Gosalves, said there was a need to adopt a “more combative” stance towards the police force.

Mr. Gonsalves said society had been talking about police reform for decades, but had got on the wrong track.

“We need to re-orient our minds to combat the police. We keep talking about their salaries and working conditions, but the police have become a body of organised crime,” said Mr. Gonsalves.

He suggested that a group of NGOs and activists should approach the Supreme Court with a public interest litigation to expand the scope of existing police reform debates. He added that independent police commissions could look into allegations of misconduct, as is the case in the United Kingdom.

Also at the meeting, People for Civil Liberties national secretary Kavita Srivastava said the focus should be on mechanisms of response and police accountability.

The activists will be meeting the Police Commissioner of Delhi soon to discuss not only Dr. Giri’s case, but the urgent need for making the force more accountable and transparent. They have also started work on a PIL to be filed in the Supreme Court.