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Srikrishna report recommends image-lift for Bombay cops

Among all those 'bad' things he noted in his report about Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, Justice B N Srikrishna also wrote a nice suggestion.

Nope, not for the betterment of the said man, but for that of the Bombay police. To change its Pandu Hawaldar image to a jazzy one, which can match that of the Bobby of London, Mounty of Canada or the NYPD of USA.

A common man's image of an average Indian policeman is a bloated, bumbling, comic figure holding a lathi in one hand with his other palm extended. Perhaps the Bollywood with its Pandu Hawaldar-type exposure on screen has helped perpetuate this image, the Commission report said, adding that the image needs to be substituted with that of a caring professional who is sensitive to the problems of the law abiding public.

Justice Srikrishna, who probed the December 1992 and January 1993 riots, and the subsequent serial bomb blasts of March 12, 1993, suggested that there is an imperative need to refurbish the sagging image of the Bombay police.

The Commission report was tabled in the state legislature last week.

The report said the policemen today carry cumbersome and unwieldy lathis, which keeps one hand engaged. It suggested that truncheons of suitable material (as carried by the policeman in the UK and USA), which could be hooked onto a buckle in the belt, be carried by them. A truncheon is more effective in hand-to-hand combat than the lathi which can easily snatched away, the report noted.

UNI

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