Author: J Dey
Publication: Mid-Day
Date: July 26, 2010
URL: http://www.mid-day.com/opinion/2010/jul/260710-encounter-specialists-Criminals-Underworld-Opinion.htm
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin
to jabber, goes an old adage. The adage is especially apt when it comes to
controlling crime in the city. The eagles " encounter specialists "
have been silent for far too long.
The parrots, or the criminals, have not only
begun jabbering but are also flying without fear. Their flight can be seen
in the spiralling crime graph " there have been no less than six shootouts
in the city in the past four months.
What's sad is that the eagles have not been
focused on change to get results. They are still stuck to the old style of
functioning. They have yet to get rid of old memories and past traditions
and take hard decisions so that they can complete their service to the citizens.
Ornithologists say the eagle can live for
as long as seventy years and complete several cycles of a rebirth of sorts
to get rid of symptoms like their wings becoming heavy, talons inflexible
and beak bent after years of hunting.
A wise eagle flies to an isolated spot to
undergo the painful process of change, which often lasts five months. The
eagle repeatedly knocks its beak against a rock until he is able to pluck
it. He waits till the new beak replaces the old one.
The new beak is then used to pull out the
talons and, when the new talons grow, they are used to pluck the old feathers
before its takes a flight of renewed vigour.
Similarly, an encounter specialist has little
choice but to take hard decisions like the wise eagle. If he doesn't, he can
get entangled in a legal battle, fall prey to the whims of seniors and be
sidelined.
The government may have to start a process
of change if they have to take control of the crime scene. The encounter specialists
too should focus on change to get new targets.
There are, in fact, no eagles left in the
city. The death of police inspector Vijay Salaskar ended a two-decade long
campaign against the underworld by the encounter specialists of the 1983 IPS
batch. Twenty members of the batch gunned down around 600 gangsters between
1995 and 2001.
Almost all the eagles have gone into hibernation
and this species may soon get extinct. Many have been kept on the sidelines.
It may be too late to do anything once the
parrots take charge " many more lives would have been lost by then.
