Woman Attacks Policeman with a Brick. He Retaliates

"Policeman attacks woman with a brick" - news headlines were everywhere. It was certainly a provocative news. Of course men and women can legally attack policemen with bricks (it happens during every ‘protest’ be it in Jammu by anti-Indians or on Agra Highway by farmers), and it will never be “news”. But if a policeman attacked a person with a brick, it should be a big news. Just like a man biting a dog is news while dog biting man is ‘un-news’.

So where did this event happen? Delhi. The same Delhi which elected an ‘Anarchist party’ to power with a ‘mad majority’! So there must be more to the news; there must be some ‘drama’; I thought. From farmer hanging himself while CM and his troupe recited poems; to an Officer being sacked for chewing ‘evil’ pan-masala – Delhi has ‘gone nuts’ literally. So I decided to read the whole news; instead of scanning headlines, which everyone including news ‘traders’ take for granted these days. The event happened like this:

A woman was riding her scooty (female of scooter; i.e. weaker and leaner than ‘male’ scooters) with “three” of her kids. These are perhaps days of “have scooter, will ride” even if total 4 human beings cramped over one; after all who cares about legal limits? And obviously only mother’s life was precious (we just celebrated mother’s day) and hence only she was wearing a helmet. She also did not have original driving license with her but only a zerox copy which one can buy from any shop. Then she jumped a Red signal; she said it was because she was getting late with her kids. Very well justified! A traffic policeman stops her and she refuses to stop (she was getting late you know) and hence he hits at the front of her scooter to stop her. The woman gets down and says, “You hit my scooter, I will hit yours”; picks up a brick and hits the policeman’s Bajaj CT-100 motorcycle. Wow! After this bravado no one should doubt if women are empowered in this country. Perhaps if all women were as brave as her, the crime capital of India would earn a better name. So is this all? “A woman hits a traffic policeman’s bike for daring to stop her while she was trying to escape after jumping a red light”? Next, the policeman loses temper, after all there were other people watching him being humiliated in this manner, and crime is stopped by “fear” not by merely writing laws on paper. He loses his temper, picks up a brick piece too and hits the woman who by then had turned back. She must have played ‘Pitto” a lot in her childhood.

What both these ‘brick warriors’ did not notice was that a curious onlooker (i.e. spy) was recoding their quarrel in his cellphone camera. He must have run away after the quarrel got over, perhaps fearing a combined attack from both sides, most probably with ‘bricks’. But he did his damage by loading the video on the internet and hence all media houses got their free content to do ‘time pass’ on screen.

The woman alleges that the policeman also asked for Rs 200 as fine for traffic violation; but when she demanded a receipt, he said in that case she will have to pay more. This is a pretty common scene all over the world, and we all know that no one hits a policeman with a brick merely for asking a fine, whether with receipt or without receipt. If she did attack the policeman’s bike, it was because she lost her temper. But the fact that she lost her temper “first” and threw a brick “first” should be totally ignored – after all news has to be sensational enough and we don’t want to miss sensationalism by going into facts of the case.

“Policeman attacked woman while her children watched” was also a very popular news headline. So did not the policeman also have kids who would have watched the quarrel on TV? And what kind of example did the ‘good’ woman made for her own kids when she jumped red lights and hit a policeman’s bike with a brick? In fact this ‘brick game’ was her own design – if she had not picked up a brick piece, the policeman won’t have bothered to get down from his bike to pick up a brick piece too. Let us blame Newton for teaching us about reactions to actions.

To me, the woman appears to be just a female version of a biker (in Delhi of course) who beat a 42 year old Delhi Transport Corp Driver to death when his bus accidently touched his bike. Interestingly that biker was instigated by his mother. If this scooty woman was so violent to hit a policeman’s bike with brick while her kids watched her, she could have aimed for his head if she were a Delhi male like the ‘driver-slayer’.

In my opinion, this was a case of “road rage” where the woman was also responsible for what happened, along with the policeman.

After this incident and media rage, the traffic policeman Satish Chandra has been dismissed from service and a case has been registered against him. He was also arrested. As a grey-haired middle aged man, most probably he has kids at home and a family to support. I think the Delhi Police has acted harsh on him by arresting and dismissing him from his job as an “image makeover” and “PR” tactics. At first there should have been some investigation – what was the need of dismissal as well as an immediate arrest when the woman did not have any further threats from the policeman and clearly she had violated multiple traffic rules and had started the scuffle too!

In the age of media-trials, former head constable Satish Chandra is one more victim of quick urban mob justice. We sit over computers and TV screens, read and watch selective aspects of news and make up our quick opinion which we share with great enthusiasm. And hence Satish Chandras of this world and their families have to suffer while the Delhi woman and her likes not only get scot-free after violating rules but also gain sympathies and fame.

- Rahul

PS: Views expressed are personal.