Chapter 19: Comrades in crime: Police reporting
Mayabhushan Nagvenkar
————————————————————————————————————— This young journalist has repeatedly shown his ability to come up with that unusual story that everybody else overlooked, only to cause ripples in Goa and beyond. His hard work, uncharacteristic honesty in telling the story as-it-is, and young-man-in-a-hurry quality stand out strongly. These approach have won him the respect of readers in as much measure as the ire of those who would not like the media to tell the whole truth. ————————————————————————————————————-
This chapter is being written much after the deadline set. My apologies. But generally deadlines have traditionally slipped by in the place of employment many of us earlier used to share. At present, I am dispensing my duties as a reporter at the Herald. So here, I make it amply clear, that my licence for unbridled freedom is at present indebted to the firm, where I draw a salary from. Anyway without delving more time and space on Utopian and impractical ideals as freedom of the press, I shall proceed further.
My few years of covering the crime-beat in Goa, have been marked a considerably easy tenure. And press freedom, rather the lack of it, has been one of the reasons for my being fairly successful at the beat.
With reporters from newspapers like The Navhind Times (manned by any editor) and The Gomantak Times, recently under Pramod Khandeparkar, as rivals, it has been rather easy to come up with exclusives. Especially because, the two competing newspapers do not seem to carry news which scalds. And when they do manage to rustle up some exclusives, it is more often in form of some sort of a balm to cover the wounds of the Establishment. Or a day or two late.
A few aspects of this deduction could be explained by interactions I have had amongst journalists from both the newspapers. Press freedom and ideals in most newspaper organizations take a back-seat. In The Navhind Times especially, that's way back.
Editors and crime — what's the connection?
With the death of former Director General of Police Rajinder Singh Sahaye, Goan editors (most of them, anyway) have lost a great patron. Let me illustrate the extent of the warm hold late Mr Sahaye had over our enlightened mandarins.
I was in the employ of The Navhind Times some years back. Press notes handed out to newspaper offices are meant for lowly hacks to tackle. Lowly hacks meaning, either sub-editors or reporters, who generally gloss over them.
Following a press conference addressed by DGP Sahaye, I came back to office one evening and filed the story. I was then told that a press note, which had been issued at the conference, had already been composed by the editor and that I need not file the story.
Surprising? Not so.
The DGP had made a few important comments, other than those, which had been mentioned in the press-note. So I altered the already composed press note, to fit in these changes. The next day, an irked Mr Sinha, who is anyway a man of few words, did not have very pleasant words to say about this. The press note, one should note, had been composed to ensure the inclusion of some adulatory phrases in the first paragraph.
Later, Sahaye was controversially transferred from Goa and he expired after a few months. Think that was his last press conference I had attended before he was transferred out of Goa. His transfer was followed by attempts made by a section of the editors to portray that the state's top cop was transferred due to his crusade against the 'matka' lobby. Whether he hated matka or not I have not been able to ascertain….
(More information on this issue can be sourced from DIG
Karnal Singh or then DIG and presently Joint
Commissioner Crime Branch Delhi Qamar Ahmed, both whom
were then going hammer and tongs against DGP Sahaye.)
Then, take the case of Deputy Inspector General of Police Karnal Singh. This man cannot be called an enigma. That is because his his intentions are so very articulate. For example, this man wanted the Bharatiya Janata Party to win the last assembly elections. Forget the leverage of the Dayanand Social Security Scheme, it was Karnal Singh's khaki force which was largely responsible for the BJP ride to power.
Until recently, Karnal Singh, the chief ministers point-man in the police department, was normally the one-stop shop for journos for daily information. In comparison to Karnal Singh's clout in the police department over the past few years, the last two Directors General of Police were mere senior officers biding their time until retirement, holding their hands over a soft fire in their respective offices to keep warm.
Karnal Singh may be responsible for a lot of not-so-pleasant issues. But the alleged instance of insensitiveness, where Mr Singh categorically stated that a recent much-publicised rape victim's hymen was intact, but possibility of a two-finger insertion was possible, was actually an issue that Mr Singh was wrongly lynched for. This writer was present at the press conference then. It was only after persistent questioning by reporters, that Mr Singh to come out with an in verbatim response, reading it out from the medical report.
This was quite unlike the press conference of an unabashedly media savvy cop Superintendent of Police Inder Dev Shukla, involving the sexuality of star athlete Pratima Gaonkar who had committed suicide in mysterious circumstances.
There are other issues that come up repeatedly in the contentious relationship between police and journalists.
Today, a journalist inadvertently narrated to me a story from the Jataka tales, with a moral vis a vis a peculiar situation in his office, a local English-language newspaper. Endless hours have been consumed by journalists especially at Cafe Prakash as to how an editor could allow his dupester reporter to carry on, despite complaints of cheating filed against the reporter at the local police station. It is another story that the officer Police Sub Inspector Raut Dessai, who was handling the complaint, was also duped off a few thousand rupees by the same journo.
Sorry, I have digressed. This is how the story goes….
A she-monkey is trapped in the middle of the flooding river. As the water level rises, she keeps pushing her little one upwards away from the watery jaws of death. But as soon as the water reaches her nose, and keeps swelling further, the mother shoves her little one below the water on the bed, and stands on it, in order to gain additional height that could possible allow her to survive.
The story's original moral is the survival of the fittest. But I think one should give the listener some liberty enough to alter it a bit. The moral which fits the bill here, I think, is survival of the canniest. And Goa is no more alien to such philosophies, which generally appear to have a genetic similarity with Bihar and the other cow-belt states, where the motto of survival is, Jiski lathi uski bhais (He who wields the stick, own the buffalo).
(For more information on this issue, one could contact just about any journo from The Navhind Times)
We could shift to the equation between the Police Press
Relations Officer (PRO) and the media.
If a layman is of the opinion that this is a source where the news from the police department actually flows from, it is a very incorrect assumption. For, in the Goa Police, the office of the PRO is that of a sorting department. The juiciest morsels extracted from the reams of wireless messages and kept under lock and key, while the unwanted and sanitized thrash is offered to media representatives.
No complaints there. That is the PROs brief.
But if there was one PRO a few years back who managed this with elan, it was Deputy Superintendent of Police Apa Teli. This man had generated such goodwill amongst mediamen, that the police department should really offer him a police medal, solely for ensuring that the image of the police in the media remained somber for half a decade or so.
Evenings at Mr Teli's office comprised of the invariable cup of tea and on several occasions pakodas from Cafe Real. Mr Teli's strategy was to ensure that discussions over such sessions never focused around any crime-related events for the day. And he ensured that his agenda stuck. And then there was also the annual get-together at one of the city hotels where liquor-happy journos abounded. Almost no journo could say no to Mr Teli. The same was the case with the liquor.
Things they say were even better during Umesh Gaonkar's tenure as the officer in charge of the Panjim town police station, with several weekend outings for journalists covering crime. Umesh, who is now promoted as a Deputy Superintendent of Police, has kept up his press management tactics in Margao. Correspondents often walk up to him and complain that they had lost their purse and Umesh readily obliges, not with the purse, but at least with some money. (For more information please contact the late 'eighties and early 'nineties language-loving journo clique and primitive Margao based correspondents-cum-teachers)
This uneasy equation also has its own kind of 'freak shows'.
A journo attached to a Marathi newspaper, who belongs to the Somnath Zuwarkar school of thought — one of those few loyal sycophants who refused to turn sides in favour of Babush Monserrate — was involved in an embarrassing incident a couple of years ago. Shopping in the departmental store in the capital run by the Goa Marketing Federation, he tried flicking a tooth-paste and slipped it inside his pocket. His sleight of the hand was noticed by an employee, and was promptly reported to the manager, who hauled him up and informed the Panjim police about the incident.
When the reporter revealed his professional identity and explained that he too owed obeisance to Somnath Zuwarkar, the complaint was duly withdrawn. Another of Mr Zuwarkar's cronies was in charge of running the marketing federation then. The journo is now dubbed as "Colgate" and he really does not bristle with joy when he is called by the name. (For more information on this please contact Police Inspector Mahesh Gaonkar)
But that's not all. Journalists pimping for the police is also not very uncommon. Pardon the word pimping, but there are times when the lines between both the professions blur.
Only recently, a South Goa correspondent for an English-language local newspaper, who also manages a newspaper agency in the region, was the force who thwarted Police Sub Inspector Jivba Dalvi's likely suspension after the latter had played 'funny' while investigating a theft case. Incidentally, the complainant in this case was Vithaldas Hegde, a popular persona amongst journalists and policemen alike.
The Baina police outpost is one of the more lucrative postings for police officers and a few select journalists. Lucrative in terms of the hafta streaming in from the bars and brothels in the area. A journalist attached to Goa's largest-selling Marathi daily, did a one-up on the police sub inspector in-charge posted there. The journo 'enforced' a system where he would collect a regular hafta from the Baina police outpost, in return for blanking out any damaging news emanating from Baina.
One more nugget about Baina: a few hard-core journos based there have some commercial sex workers on call, just the way some cops do. The second most assured source of income for cops is the hafta from matka agents. Here too a few journos have not lagged too far behind. A long-standing correspondent for an English-language newspaper, who has been mentioned earlier in this chapter, runs two such gaddas located opposite the Margao police station, where matka bets are accepted, even amidst the worst of police crack-downs on gambling outlets.
While writing this, I may appear to be very partial to the Margao journos and cops. But reality is that the place is just so colourful. Here's another one. A journalist's spouse posted as a head constable at the Margao police station is audacious enough to accepts matka bets in the police station building.
QUOTE UNCOUTH: One of SP Shukla's latest pursuits is philosophy. Once upon a time, it was English. A Deputy Superintendent of Police never tires of this tale. Mr Shukla, who loves positive interactions with the media and issuing press notes, had just typed out one such press note and called the DySP in. "Maine press note draft kiya hai. Aap jara isme grammer bhar do" (I have drafted a press note. Could you please fit the grammer in?)