Is there a police mindset?
by Rahul Tripathi,TNN
NEW DELHI: When Delhi police paraded three suspected Indian Mujahideen terrorists – Mohammed Shakeel, Saquib Nisar and Zia-ur-Rehman – before the media last week in Arab-style kifayah scarves, little did it realize it would stir a hornet's nest. A section of the Muslim community said that the scarves used were similar to those worn by Muslims, especially clerics. Some said they were part of a costume called the abaaya. Numerous e-mails and blogs said that parading those accused of the recent Delhi blasts in these scarves showed the typical mindset of the police. "These three were students. They would have looked equally photogenic had their faces been covered with any other scarf," said a cleric in a South Delhi madrassa. "There appears to be a conscious effort on the part of the Delhi Police to re-assert the identity of the youth -- that of being Muslims. The visual message conveyed is very strong and creates stereotypes for the already-stereotyped Muslim community in India." The police went into defensive mode and insisted that they had been using Arab-style scarves to hide suspected criminals’ faces for the last few months. They even claimed that the scarves belonged to the arrested men. But immediately after the controversy began, in fact the very next day, the police didn’t use the Arab-style scarves when they took the three alleged terrorists for a medical test. Instead, they used normal black scarves. Several senior police officers were given a chance to write for STOI, but they declined. However, they were at pains to dismiss the use of stereotypes. They explained that they didn't mean to target any community and the scarves were meant to protect the identity of the accused. This is particularly important if there is overwhelming media interest in the accused. If the faces of alleged criminals become well known, the results of a test identification parade (TIP) become meaningless. Additional Commissioner of Police (crime and railways) Satyendra Garg says, "The rule book says that the identity of the accused should not be disclosed in cases where a TIP is to be conducted. Otherwise, he can take an alibi saying that his face was shown in newspapers and television channels and everyone can recognise him now. This hampers investigation as eyewitnesses too get influenced by such an account. The court too takes a lenient view of the accused then." One story doing the rounds is that these scarves were noticed while someone was browsing the net and saw Taliban militants using them. The scarves looked rakish but neat and the district police placed a bulk order for them. Whatever the truth, the fact remains the kifayah is considered foreign to India. It was used during Palestinian peasant resistance to the British. Later, all Palestinian men began to wear these scarves and it became a trademark of the late PLO chairman Yasser Arafat. In fact, the scarves have three variants -- the white kifayah with tassels, which underlines an individual's social status and is worn by sheikhs and nobility; the black and white chequered one that is a symbol of armed struggle in Palestine and the red and white chequered one used to announce religious identity and allegiance to Wahhabi Islam. In Saudi Arabia, clerics and the religious police who patrol the streets to enforce shariah, wear this type of kifayah. |
