Justice Bhuyan flags police assaults on protesters, lack of ‘detachment'

Supreme Court judge Justice Ujjal Bhuyan on Friday, 4 September expressed concern over police personnel assaulting protesting students and demonstrators, saying such incidents were “distressing” and that the disappearance of professional detachment among police officers was a matter of “grave concern”.

Bhuyan was speaking at the launch of former IPS officer and security secretary Yashovardhan Azad’s book Policing the Republic, at Viceroy Hall in New Delhi.

“All of us are dismayed when we see young officers of the Indian Police Service personally going and assaulting protesters and demonstrators. This is something very, very distressing to observe,” he said. “The detachment expected of police officers somehow seems to be disappearing, and this is indeed a matter of grave concern.”

The remarks come amid continuing scrutiny of police action against students and demonstrators at Jantar Mantar, and a wider debate over the treatment of dissent and protest in India.

They also follow a series of recent interventions by Bhuyan on the rights of protesters and students. At a lecture in Bhopal on 25 July, he had warned that public spaces for divergent views were shrinking, pointing to cases in which students protesting for their rights were arrested and later subjected to restrictive bail conditions.

On 30 August, speaking at the National Law University, Delhi, Bhuyan said the right to question was not an act of defiance but an essential expression of citizenship, liberty and constitutional responsibility. He said students could not be threatened with punitive action merely for holding a different view or asking questions, describing such action as unconstitutional and a misuse of power and office

“Intolerance begins to undermine that framework when disagreement or dissent is no longer treated as a legitimate difference of opinion but as something that must be silenced, rejected or punished,” he said at the NLU Delhi convocation.

Bhuyan also said a constitutional democracy did not require uniformity of thought and that its maturity was reflected in how it responded to opinions that were difficult, unpopular or inconvenient.

Former Union minister P. Chidambaram and former Maharashtra DGP D. Shivanandhan also participated in the book launch, which had been scheduled with Bhuyan as the inaugural speaker and Chidambaram, Shivanandhan and Azad as panellists.

With PTI inputs