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Ahmedabad police commissioner ashamed at failure

Sheela Bhatt in Ahmedabad

Prashant Chandra Pande, Ahmedabad police commissioner, admitted on Thursday that his police force was not prepared for the flare up in the city following the burning of 58 karsevaks in Godhra in Gujarat on Wednesday.

Police officers in Ahmedabad swear by Pande's brilliant track record, but the sheer helplessness of the police in the face of rampaging mobs has shattered his reputation.

Speaking to rediff.com, Pande said that his force found itself outnumbered. He said that the police was also not able to man the suburban areas properly.

"It's not possible to man such a big area. In a normal course you are not even visiting those areas. At the best at every point one can provide three or four policemen. And when there is a crowd of 10,000 at one place, I can visualise what must be the position of my policemen," the commissioner explained.

He said that the police also lacked proper communication equipment making it difficult to rush reinforcements to sensitive areas.

When asked why the police did not act soon enough in the case of former Congress Member of Parliament, Ahsan Jaffery, who was burnt alive by a mob in front of a large police force, Pande said, "We did fire two rounds to prevent the crowd. When all the people decide to come out on roads, the police cannot do much. The population of Ahmedabad is 5 million plus."

Explaining his point of view in detail, Pande said that a strong contingent of policemen was posted at the front of the building where Jaffery was staying. However, a group of miscreants broke the down the wall at the back of the building, and then attacked the residential complex with petrol bombs setting it on fire.

Trying to explain away the charge of communal bias of the policemen, he said, "Where the whole society has opted for a certain colour in a particular issue, it's very difficult to expect the policemen to be totally isolated and unaffected."

However, he was quick to express distress at the unbridled chaos in Ahmedabad saying, "My head hangs in shame."

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