A video has been doing the rounds on social media, wherein light has been shed upon the issue of lack of Muslims found in the police force. The video quotes the data presented by the NCRB in the year 2010, detailing Muslim representation in the police force of India. Here is a table from the report that shows SC, ST and Muslim representation in the Police Force in 2010:

The video highlights that, based on the data provided by the above-mentioned table, the total number of police personnel present in the force in the year 2010 were 1580311. Out of these, the total Muslim police personnel were only 109262, which formed only a 6.91% of the total police force. Jammu and Kashmir accounted for a majority of these Muslim police personnel, as 44457 out of the total 109262 Muslim police force were found there only. hence, if we took out the Muslim police force of Jammu and Kashmir, only 64805 Muslim individuals were a part of the police force, which formed a mere 4.31% of the total police force.

The video then reports the news article published by the print in November 2021, which had analysed the Tata Trusts’ study named ‘India Justice Report.’ The said report, published in October 2019, provided that the Muslim representation in Indian police has “remained consistently low” at 3 to 4 per cent. The report also provided that since 2013, the National Crimes Records Bureau annual report has ceased reporting the level of Muslim representation in the police.

The video then states that from the data provided above, it can be fairly deduced that the number of Muslims present in the police force is almost equivalent to zero.

The video can be viewed here:

भारत के सभी राज्यों की 15 लाख पुलिस फोर्स में से जम्मू कश्मीर के 44457 मुस्लिम पुलिस कर्मचारियों को निकाल दें तो केवल 64805 (4.31%) मुस्लिम पुलिस कर्मचारी हैं.

अब आप खुद अंदाजा लगा लीजिये मुसलमानों की Police में न के बराबर भागीदारी है. https://t.co/AMoDSOWGNW pic.twitter.com/FgXTDdsYde

— Sahil Razvi (@SahilRazvii) January 22, 2023

The Sachar Committee report of November, 2006 had also pointed to the poor representation of Muslims in various government services and recommended having Muslim officers at top positions in police stations as a way to build confidence among the population which may have a high concentration of Muslims.

While government statistics were not available, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) had had raised concerns over the abysmal representation of minority communities in the city’s police force following the death of two Muslims in the police firing at an anti- Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests in Mangaluru on December 19, 2020.

As per the data provided, published on On Manorama, which had been sourced from the Mangaluru City Police (MCP) website, it was depicted that 605 personnel work in 15 police stations (Law and Order). No Muslim or Christian figured in seven key positions – one Commissioner, two Deputy Commissioners and four Assistant Commissioners – in the force. Of the remaining 598 positions, 575 posts, or 95.37%, had been occupied by the members of the Hindu community. These included inspectors, sub-inspectors, assistant sub-inspectors and constables. The city police force had just 14 Muslims and 9 Christians. This constituted just 3.47% of the force’s total strength. According to the census of 2011, the two communities form 35% of Mangaluru’s population (Muslims form 23.85%, Christians 11.14%).

De-sensitized police force

A direct issue which is attached to the police force being limited to the Hindu upper caste is that a deep-rooted bias remains within our police force against India’s religious minorities. A study presented by the Common Cause- Centre for the study of developing societies (CSDS), Lokneeti had revealed disturbing prejudices of police personnel towards Muslims on the question of committing violence. The study has also highlighted the prejudicial attitudes in the incidents of mob violence. The idea behind the study titled ‘Status of Policing in India Report 2019’, was to “offer policy-oriented insights into the conditions in which Indian police works.”

The report highlights a disturbingly evident bias in attitudes towards Muslims as a community when it came to the question of committing crimes. It observed, “When we looked at what the police personnel think about various communities, the data indicated a significant bias against Muslims. However, no such prejudices were reported against people from SC or ST communities. About half of the police personnel reported that Muslims are likely to be naturally prone towards committing violence (‘very much’ and ‘somewhat’ combined). We observed similar trend in the reverse direction as well, with a smaller number of police personnel likely to report that Muslims are less likely to be naturally prone at committing violence as compared to people from various caste-groups”.

A deeper analysis of the said report can be read here.
 

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A study by Common Cause- Centre for the study of developing societies (CSDS), Lokneeti has again revealed that marginalised communities such the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward castes (OBCs) and women are under-represented in the country’s police forces. Tragically, the organisation could not even look at the presence of the Muslim minorities because of the deliberate concealment of this data by the government. Not just Muslims, Christians, the other small but distinct religious minority has also been victim of a targeted bias from the system. In 2008, in both Kandhamal and Karnataka evidences of these attitudes were seen.
 
The idea behind the present study titled ‘Status of Policing in India Report 2019’, was to “offer policy-oriented insights into the conditions in which Indian police works.” Apart from other aspects, the report delves into sensitivities and service conditions of police personnel, their resources and infrastructure, patterns of their routine contact with common people and state of policing apparatus on the country.
 
The report titled, Status of Policing in India Report 2019 –Policy Adequacy and Working Conditions may be read here.
 
On the issue of diversity, the report highlights that while SCs are under-represented in 19 out of 21 state police forces studied in proportion to their share of reserved postings, STs and OBCs are inadequately represented in 16 and 11 states, respectively.
 
The representation of women amongst these is the “worst” with only 7.3 percent women police personnel at the national level in 2016. Moreover, none of the states have been able to meet the required benchmark of 33 percent while filling their posts, as per the report. The highest representation has been in Tamil Nadu at 12.9 percent in 2016.
 
When it comes to SCs, their representation in the state police force ranges from a worrying 40.2 percent (of the reserved sanctioned strength) in Uttar Pradesh (UP) to 101.8 percent in Punjab. SCs are underrepresented across North Indian states such as UP, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, being some of the worst performing states.
 
On similar lines, the ST representation across states ranges from 3.6 percent in Haryana to 152.5 percent in Uttarakhand. While the OBC representation is the poorest in West Bengal with 22.6 percent and best in Telangana with 145.3 percent.
 
The report observes that while overall 13.4 per cent of the total police personnel are officers (assistant sub-inspector to deputy superintendent of police), only 11.5 per cent, 11.6 per cent, 11.1 per cent and 10.1 per cent of the SCs, STs, OBCs and women are of the officer rank.
 
The data for SCs, STs and OBCs is only available only till the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP). Therefore, the percentage of officers among women in police and the overall police force has also been taken as the proportion of ASI to DySP to enable comparison across categories, the report highlighted. Except for five of the selected states namely Assam, MP, Nagaland, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand, the proportion of women officers is consistently lower than the overall proportion of officers in all state, the report noted.
 
More than one-third of the states studied have disproportionately lower number of officers across all four categories. For example, in Delhi the overall number of officers is 20.6 per cent whereas only four per cent of the OBCs are officers. Similarly, in West Bengal, nearly 13 per cent of the STs and OBCs were of the officer rank while the overall figures stood at 23.8 per cent.
 
From the report, it becomes clear that maintaining diversity is not on the states’ agenda. The police forces are not only marred by high vacancies in the sanctioned posts, but also a lack of promotion or growth even if one gets recruited.
 
There is no data on representation of Muslims who are not covered under any reservation, as the data was discontinued by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) after 2013.
 
The report says, “Aside from the moral and productivity-based arguments in favour of diversity, it is also a legal mandate for police forces in the country.” The Constitution makes provisions for reservations for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in public service recruitments, including police, at both the State and the Central levels. Further, the Ministry of Home Affairs has issued advisories to the State governments to increase the representation of women to at least 33 percent of the total police strength in the States. It is against these benchmarks of State-specific reservation quotas and the MHA advisory that the study measures the diversity within the police forces of different States.
 
In 2009, the Union Home Ministry set 33% as the benchmark target for women’s representation in the police. Apart from the Union Territories, only nine states adopted 33% reservation, five states 30%, Bihar 38% and five states below 30%. Nine states are yet to set targets.
In 2013, the Union Government recommended each police station to have at least three women Sub-Inspectors and 10 women police Constables to ensure women help desks are staffed at all times.
In 2015, the Union proposed creating Investigative Units for Crimes Against Women (IUCAW) at police stations in crime-prone districts across states. These units are to have 15 specialised investigators dealing specifically with crimes against women. At least one-third of the investigative staff are required to be women.
Studies in the past have highlighted how diversity ensures more acceptability in communities and makes problem solving easier.
 
Ronal Weitzer, a US based researcher and author of the book, Race and Policing in America wrote, “Importantly, such diversity can help to build trust and confidence in the police: the more a police department reflects the composition of the local population, the higher the department’s reputation among residents, which can provide a foundation to build further trust, coupled with other needed reforms.”
 
Pavani Nagaraja Bhat from the Police Reforms Program of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) highlights the grave problem of under-representation of women in the police forces in an essay, “As of 1 January 2017, the strength of women police in India was 7.28% of the total police.[1]This low representation of women is despite state governments setting reservation targets for women in the police ranging from 4% to 38%. Of the 7.28%, 0.85% belong to supervisory ranks, 9.76% to investigative ranks and 89.37% to the constabulary. These numbers are reflective of the exclusion of women in policing — especially at investigative and leadership levels. This inordinately affects the quality of policing. Yet, police recruitment continues to be irregular and scanty.”
 
United Nations Women collected data across 39 countries which showed that the presence of women police correlates positively with reporting of sexual assault, confirming that recruiting women is an important component of a gender-responsive justice system.
Several studies show the value of women in policing, not just in handling violence against women but other inherent aspects of policing. This is due to the experiences and realities of women that are different from those of men. A study from 2010 observed: “twenty years of exhaustive research demonstrates that women police officers utilise a style of policing that relies less on physical force, and more on communication skills that defuse potentially violent situations. Women police officers are therefore much less likely to be involved in occurrences of police brutality, and are also much more likely to effectively respond to police calls regarding violence against women. Despite having a poor record in gender based crimes, India still lags far behind in the representation of women in police forces.
 
The study does not include the inclusion of Muslims, India’s most hounded minority today. According to a report compiled by The Economist “No serious official effort has been made to assess the lot of India’s Muslims since the publication in 2006 of a study ordered by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Called the Sachar report, it broadly showed Muslims to be stuck at the bottom of almost every economic or social heap. Though heavily urban, Muslims had a particularly low share of public (or any formal) jobs, school and university places, and seats in politics. They earned less than other groups, were more excluded from banks and other finance, spent fewer years in school and had lower literacy rates. Pitifully few entered the army or the police force.”
 
Sabrangindia and Communalism Combat  before that has been assiduously analysing and campaigning around the issue of both representation of Indian Muslims in the police force and administration and also the attitudes of men in uniform vis a vis India’s largest minority.
An introduction to the Justice BN Srikrishna Commission Report into the Bombay 1992-1993 brute anti-minority pogrom published an introduction by journalist, educationist and activist, Teesta Setalvad. She has researched the various judicial commission reports into anti-minority violence. This section. Anti-Minority Bias in the Police Force may be read here. Ex-IPS officer, KS Subramanian’s essay ‘Babri Masjid 1992 – Gujarat 2002 – Kashmir 2016: How the Sangh Parivar has wrecked India’s secular social fabric by sustained anti-minority violence’ may be read here.  
 
In February 1995, in the cover story of Communalism Combat (www.sabrang.com) Vibhuti Narain Rai gave an interview that turned the searchlight within, on the Indian Police Force. Setalvad had met him at the National PoliceAcademy where I had been asked to become part of a training given my work in the post Babri-Masjid demolition Bombay violence. In this explosive interview he had argued, cogently and with statistics about the deep-rooted bias within the Indian police. “No riot can continue for more than 24 hours unless the state wants it to continue,” he had said in an interview, that, after it appeared in the February 1995 issue of Communalism Combat was reproduced by 35 Indian publications in different languages. This seminal interview may be read here.
 
This poor representation of various sections of India’s marginalised, make it almost impossible for the social issues and crimes most plaguing the country today, to be taken seriously by the police. In fact, one witnesses that in many instances the police collude with the majoritarian community, namely Upper caste class Hindu male to perpetuate even more violence on those who are already persecuted.
Though some progressive judgments such as the one in which the SC upholds Karnataka law on Reservations in Promotions for Govt. employees provide a glimmer of hope, the implementation on the ground remains questionable.

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