KOLKATA: KOLKATA: Remember the unsuccessful chase scenes of sub-inspector Sudhanshu Dutta (Saurabh Shukla) behind Barfi a.k.a Murphy (Ranbir Kapoor) in the Bollywood flick Barfi? The policeman could never catch the swift repeat offender due to his bulgeoning belly.
Movies are a reflection of our society and often overweight policemen in real life are left huffing and puffing by crooks. Now the Calcutta High Court has decided to take unfit cops to task. Hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a retired Army jawan Kamal Dey about the lack of physical fitness among West Bengal policemen, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court headed by chief justice Nishita Matre and justice Tapobrata Chakraborty has ordered the home secretary of the state to submit a status report on the fitness of policemen in the West Bengal Police and Kolkata Police forces within a month time. The next hearing is six weeks from now.
The petitioner submitted a large number of photographs of policemen with pot bellies, including senior officers. He even submitted photographs of overweight policemen dozing off on duty. The petitioner says that due to bulging bellies, policemen are often unable to chase offenders and hesitate to investigate a case a file a chargesheet and instead file an FRT (final report true).
An FRT is issued when the police believe the complaint may be true but are unable to substantiate the charges. The petitioner believes the issue of FRTs is much higher in West Bengal than in other states due to the lethargic nature of policemen here. Policemen have given mixed reactions to the allegations. "The younger generation of policemen is quite fit.
They run, work out in gyms and even train in the martial arts and boxing. However, unfitness grows as cops cross the 35-year mark," a senior official of the Kolkata Police told New Indian Express. Other officers were offended by the insinuation that only West Bengal policemen are unfit. "Bellies are a natural phenomenon. Don't cops in UP, Bihar and the southern states have bellies? Fitness will gradually go down as age increases," said a West Bengal police official posted in North 24 Parganas. Police pot bellies have been in the news before. The late Siddhartha Shankar Roy, then chief minister, earned some notoriety for patting the bellies of policemen and giving them a stern talking to.