New Delhi: Puducherry Lt. Governor Kiran Bedi, who was repeatedly remembered in the slogans raised by Delhi Police during the Monday protests, has advised the leadership on the importance of protecting its personnel.
Slogans of ‘Police commissioner kaisa ho, Kiran Bedi jaisa ho’ had been raised during the protest led by thousands of police personnel over the recent clashes with the lawyers. “When Police men and women perform their duty fairly, firmly, fearlessly and responsibly, they need to be protected by their seniors,” Bedi wrote in a statement a day after the 11-hour-long protest.
She also posed a biting question in which she asked if the leadership is willing to learn lessons from "defining" moments like this. “Such actions are the defining moments of police leadership...As mine did in Jan 1988. We then did not have video virals. Technology now speaks and provides evidence for and against. There are lessons to be learnt for all, from this incident yet again. Key is are we willing?” her statement read.
Bedi, like the protesting personnel, was referencing a similar incident that had taken place during her tenure as the deputy police commissioner in 1988. The fight had begun in January of that year with the arrest and handcuffing of a lawyer for petty theft. Lawyers at the Tis Hazari complex had immediately gone on strike, charging that lawyers were not supposed to be handcuffed in such cases.
The strike had quickly spread nationwide and led to two violent clashes, in which the lawyers charged that Bedi had failed to protect them. The lawyers had alleged that of the two separate attacks on a group of lawyers - one was engineered by Bedi and other ordered by her.
On Monday, Bedi had advised Delhi Police to remain firm on its stand as she had in 1988. “I remained firm and refused to budge to the demand of the lawyers seeking suspension/arrest of the cops responsible for handcuffing the advocate," she had said.
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