Plea filed in Supreme Court seeking model police bill

New Delhi, September 4

A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking constitution of a ‘model police bill’ to make policing system “transparent, independent, accountable and people-friendly”.

The petition, filed by advocate and former Delhi BJP spokesperson Ashwini Upadhyay, sought a direction to the Centre to constitute a ‘judicial commission’ or an expert committee to examine the Police Act of developed countries, particularly the US, Singapore and France and draft the ‘model police bill’.

The PIL, which is likely to come up for hearing in the coming days, also urged the court to direct the Law Commission of India to examine police acts of these countries for drafting the bill in order to make the police system “efficient, effective, transparent, sensible, accountable and techno-savvy, and to secure ‘rule of law’ and right to life, liberty and dignity of citizens”.

The petition, filed by advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey, alleged that the 1990 Kashmir killings did not happen only in the dark of the night but in broad daylight as well “because what we have is the ruler’s police not the people’s police”.

“What happened in 1990 in Kashmir, it happened in 2021 in Bengal as well and that too in broad daylight. But police did nothing as what we have is ruler’s police, not people’s police,” it claimed.

The ‘Colonial Police Act, 1861’ is ineffective, outdated, cumbersome, and has completely failed to secure rule of law, right to life, liberty, dignity and other precious fundamental rights of citizens but the executive did nothing to amend it, the petitioner said.

The PIL further alleged that many times, police don’t lodge FIRs without the consent of MLAs or MPs of the ruling party.

“And even if they lodge an FIR on the court’s order, the ruling party representatives decide what sections should be used against the accused,” it said.

It further said that politicisation of the police is the biggest threat to rule of law and right to life, liberty and dignity of citizens. PTI