The Warrant-Less State

In India the police routinely barges into private property, looks into phone records happily provided by the phone companies, detains people for "questioning", stops people from entering a city, asks people to open their bags, snatches vehicle keys from people stopped for a traffic violation, and so on.

All this without any judicial oversight, without any warrant, and without any repercussions.

The police is a law unto itself.

Where to start?

1. The laws are outdated and colonial.
2. The laws are ambiguous, contradictory, too sweeping, and badly-drafted.
3. The case law is horribly contradictory and offers precedents for every kind of judicial order.
4. The courts are overburdened and mundane matters (tenant eviction, child custody, anticipatory bail, etc.) are pending before the Supreme Court, the highest court of the land.

In this deeply distressing state of affairs, how do we get police to be more accountable to the people who ultimately pay the taxes which pay the police's salaries?

How do we make the police respect the people that it is supposed to serve?

I don't know the way to restrain this lawless police force.  There is untold suffering in India due to the failure of law-enforcement and judicial processes.  So many committes have given empty suggestions.  Supreme Court throws up its hands when it cannot contain this lawlessness by the law-enforcers.

Supreme Court has repeatedly begged the states to implement police reforms.

What has been the result: Naught.

From this report:

Not a single state government is willing to cooperate. What can we do?

My recommendation to the Supreme Court justices: resign, and refuse to participate in this charade.

The Indian public have become hopeless about justice and thereby corrupt.

Maybe special courts ought to be set up to monitor police behavior and to swiftly and strictly punish the police both for exceeding their brief, and for dereliction of duty.

The police is the institution in India having a monopoly on violence.  This monopoly MUST be very strongly regulated.

The pervasiveness of corruption and crime in India is because the police has been exploited by the state for its ends, and not offered to the nation for its citizens.