Pursuit of Law and Order

PURSUIT OF LAW AND ORDER

A.P. DURAI

Notion Press

Old No. 38, New No. 6

McNichols Road, Chetpet

Chennai - 600 031

First Published by Notion Press 2015

Copyright © A.P. Durai 2015

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 978-93-52062-15-7

This book has been published in good faith that the work of the author is original. All efforts have been taken to make the material error-free. However, the author and the publisher disclaim the responsibility.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

In Constant Remembrance

This book is dedicated to the

Holy Feet of My Master

Pujyashri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari

(1927–2014)

Who inspired, shaped and steered my life

Towards the goal of disinterested service

Preface

Memories at my age are nothing but autumn leaves – russet coloured and shining in the setting sun – that must inevitably fall when their time has come. They must fertilise the minds of the next generation, the experiences shared and lessons transmitted. That is why I started writing these pages from my past for a limited circle. Then I thought poor students struggling against the odds in life would derive inspiration from my life. Similarly, young officers fighting to uphold values of integrity and impartiality in the face of compliant superiors and scheming politicians would gain courage to stand fast or go down fighting for the cause.

Now, looking at what I have written, I must say that it is writing on the wall for all those who wield power for their own benefit – the unscrupulous among the police, politicians, bureaucrats, judiciary, and the wealthy, who think they can buy one another and have their own way. The underlying message is clear – our Karma will catch up with us and then we cannot complain! I wish all people in these categories would read this book and use it as a mirror to see their true image. Duty bound, I have sketched what goes on behind the façade of governance, especially touching law enforcement in our country, because that was my turf. But on this turf, I had to face not only unprofessional colleagues with their own agenda, but also politicians prowling around with impunity, often invited or tolerated by the police themselves.

I could take it all in the stride without breaking down or succumbing to the ‘system’, because, side by side with my external life, I pursued the inner life – in essence, the pursuit of law and order within and without. Through the inner search, I came upon hitherto hidden sources of inspiration, intuition, energy and spirit, to turn my field of work into a fulcrum of my evolution, inside and outside. This account is a jumble of experiences, struggles and errors of conduct and judgment – yet speckled with grains of character, courage and fortitude. Yes, it is an unusually mixed bag, especially because I chose to use my career as an experiment with my convictions, and as an instrument of my redemption. I have been fond of living the Shakespearean adage – And above all, be true to thine own self.

This is a strange story, therefore, as my life weaves through in two dimensions, the spiritual and the material, one impacting on the other indelibly and finally shaping me into something which I had never expected in my early years.

My spiritual search got me a Master who removed my uncertainties and restored my faith and confidence which kept me company on the road less travelled. This part may provoke eyebrows to be raised among the uninitiated, but those who are striving and evolving will understand and even feel encouraged to pursue the ceaseless search.

At the end of the day, despite the grime and scars acquired in my personal and professional battles, I draw solace from the fact that my Master was proud of my performance as a professional. Some years after my retirement, a few senior IPS officers from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka came to call on him at his ashram in Manapakkam in Chennai. At the lunch table, one or two officers made some self-exculpatory statements about the failures of the police on the law and order front, the hunt for forest brigand Veerappan, and so on. Master was irked and placed the blame squarely on the police leadership. He referred to my unceremonious transfer from the post of Director General of Police, Karnataka and said, If only ten senior IPS officers in Karnataka had filed their resignations in protest, Durai could not have been shifted to Delhi. And then he added for good measure, Durai is the only police officer I admire, because he implemented my teachings in his work.

In this book, I have attempted to describe, in some detail, what has been summed up by my Master above. Before memory fades, every one of my kind and experience owes it to society to share what he has faced, felt and done, at least from the point of view of the history of our times, albeit through the key hole of an individual participant’s perception.

A passage from ‘The Dhammapada’ which I read thirty years back had etched itself in my mind: Even as a lion, not afraid of noises; even as the wind, never caught in a net and even as the lotus leaf, never touched by water… This kind of existence has been my ideal and the direction of my efforts and therefore, when I decided to retire somewhat prematurely, declining post retirement positions, there was no big wrench or trauma, as I had resisted developing any attachment. Power or position had remained a means of doing good to the many and I had never pursued them as my goal. My freedom to say or do the right thing had been preserved, although at the cost of what might have been a smooth career driven by ambition and achieved through compromises, as commonly seen in the services. But it was a small price to pay as I was able to leave government service on my own with my dignity intact and my head held high. The Tagorean ideal of never bending the knee before insolent might had become my guiding star. Life has taught me to bend my knee only before Him who is enshrined in my heart. It was a proud moment for me when I could face an arrogant chief minister and tell him, It is not you who made me the Director General of Police, He (pointing my finger above) did it!

A.P. Durai

Chennai

Dated 24th July 2015

apdurai.chennai@gmail.com

Contents

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

1. Windy Days in Vadakangulam

2. Tuticorin: Life in a Small Town

3. The Teen-aged Tutor

4. Mount Abu: The average probationer

5. The Yadgiri Days (1964–66)

6. The Short Passage through Tumkur

7. The young Superintendent, Kolar (1967–69)

8. The Rolling Stone (1969–71)

9. Back to Kolar (1971–73)

10. Hassan, the boiling pot (1973–74)

11. Captaining the Railway police (1974–76)

12. Channapatna brings change (1976)

13. Passion for road safety (1976–77)

14. In the wonderland of films (1977–79)

15. Advocacy for police ethics (1979–80)

16. DIG Western Range (1980–82)

17. Eleven Months in Mysore (1982–83)

18. Time for inner development (1983–86)

19. Delhi: Glimpses of India and the world (1987–91)

20. ADGP (Administration): Good post and a bad boss

21. A productive period (1992–94)

22. Director, SVP National Police Academy, Hyderabad (1994–96)

23. Director General of Police, Karnataka (1996–97)

24. The Great Indian Transfer Circus

25. The RPF: The last stand on discipline

26. The CBI vs Lalu Prasad Yadav

27. Post Script: Lessons from Life

Chapter 1

Windy Days in Vadakangulam

My younger daughter, Nithya, told me not long ago, You have lived a full life. You must write down your experiences, not in a chronological fashion, but as interesting episodes. The advice was good, but the catch is that I am not a good writer, especially when it is about me. I cannot escape the vice like grip of chronology without which I cannot recall anything! The second hurdle to writing was proof reading, editing, formatting and so on, where my elder daughter, Priya, stepped in and contributed her expertise. My wife, Daphne, chipped in with advice to delete some unsavoury episodes and my son suggested the deletion of unnecessary detail to keep up the tempo. (As a result, I deleted 15,000 words!)

The story naturally has to unfold from my boyhood days in my native village of Vadakangulam, as these memories stand impressed indelibly in my mind. So do my experiences subsequently during my college days in Tuticorin, as this was also a period of adversities.

The innocence of youth helped to filter out the truth that life could have been better than what it was, and this helped in preventing frustration from setting in. One had to accept life as it came, and work forward towards improving one’s condition in life with a positive attitude. There were many others in my village, Vadakangulam, in the same boat. At least my father, who was a teacher most of his life, had a fixed income which many other families could not hope for. In a village of about three thousand population in the early 1950s, many men were in Ceylon doing petty jobs and remitting home small sums of money, and sometimes none at all. While their families struggled for one square meal a day, we were better off in comparison.

Hiccups in High School

In the years I studied in St Teresa’s High School in Vadakangulam, my eldest brother, Raja, had failed in Intermediate and was hunting for a job. He joined as a clerk in the registration department and started sending home some twenty rupees a month. My elder brother, Rabi, completed his SSLC and joined the Navy as a rating. He was bright but could not be sent to college. Father was earning Rs. 125 per month in St Teresa’s School where Rabi and I had been studying. Even my high school education ran into difficulties as the headmaster refused to give a full fee concession to both of us. In a huff, my father came back home and announced that I would not go to school, and that he would teach me at home. Thus, my seventh standard was done at home. Every morning, father would give me the lessons to be covered and I would spend the day working on them.

Ashok, the ninth member of the family, was born one November evening in 1951, in a dark room in our old house in Nadu Theru (Middle Street). In the months preceding his arrival, I could see that my mother felt embarrassed by this pregnancy and fought shy of going out in that condition. She used to go to church only after dusk, her sari fully drawn around her. Ponnamma Athai, father’s elder sister, came from Ramapuram near Nagercoil and acted as the midwife. We youngsters had no clue to the happenings, but at the end of the day, we saw a buxom baby with a broad chest, fair in complexion, by the side of our mother.

As Ashok grew, the food was not enough for him, especially in the night, and mother used to wait at the door step with Ashok perched on her waist. The ‘boondi’ seller would turn up around seven thirty, pushing his cart and ringing a bell, and in the darkness he was a beacon boasting a petromax lamp. Mother would buy a half anna worth of boondi and feed Ashok.

My elder sister, Rani, was asthmatic and was treated from her early days with various ‘lehiams’ and eucalyptus oil mixed with sugar, wrapped in a betel leaf. She was the only one who was given a small glass of cow’s milk in the nights, although she would protest. When Rani joined school again at the Fifth Form level, after her break in studies, we shared the same books and studied together at home. In the light of the kerosene lamp, we used to sit together and study in the nights. To keep awake, she would munch some fried gram, and I would apply water on my eyes. She used to retire a little early, but I was the plodding type. Later, in Tuticorin also, we continued this, but during the examination seasons, I used to sit till one a.m. and then sleep till seven in the morning. I feel that, unlike my siblings, who absorbed a lot in their classes, I was a dreamer in class and had to compensate by repeated readings at home. My memory was good and during examinations, the relevant pages in the books used to appear in my mind’s eye, and I used to take advantage of it. This method did not promote original thinking and I developed my own ability to think only after leaving college. This is perhaps a reflection on our educational system, which rewarded a student who had a good memory, and could reproduce in examinations what was in the text books.

Mother faces humiliation

One evening in 1953, two men landed up from distant Vathalakundu, where we had lived for a year before moving to Palayamkottai in 1950. At the time of moving the family, father had taken a loan of a hundred rupees from a Cooperative Society, a sum which had remained unpaid and grown to Rs.250. The two messengers produced a court order for attachment of our house. Father was away on an excursion with his students from St Teresa’s High School. My grandfather came to commiserate and his advice was that we should throw all our belongings into the neighbouring house (which happened to be vacant) over the dividing wall, and then hope for the best. I heard my mother lamenting afterwards, Is this the help I expected from my father? She took my brother, Rabi, with her and went to her elder brother, Devadas’s, house. According to Rabi, it was a humiliating experience for mother. Aunt Arputham took her to task for having borne too many children, and for her extravagant ways exemplified by her getting new clothes for her children every Christmas and Easter. Devadas uncle finally gave the money with the usual frown on his face, but deserved praise for rescuing our family that day. For children like us, it was a traumatic experience as, for a moment, it looked like we were going to be thrown out of our house. When father came back, there were no fireworks from mother, not a word of recrimination. All our lives with her, we never heard her complaining about her husband.

A brother leaves home

When sixteen year old Rabi had to leave for Vizag, where he was to be trained in INS Circars, my mother said, I have been crying my heart out every evening in the church. It is such a wrench, and I feel as if I am parting with a little baby. Economic necessity drove us to send a bright boy to the Navy at a tender age where he would spend the next ten years, slowly earning his grades in the non-officer level. He improved his qualifications, obtained a degree and got selected as a Commissioned Officer in the Army in the year 1964, and later joined the FACT in the executive cadre and made a name for himself. His remittance of rupees fifty while he was in the Navy was a godsend to my mother. By that time, we had moved to Tuticorin, where our family stayed till we were all educated in college, and moved out for employment. Father and mother stayed on in Tuticorin for the remainder of their lives.

The weakling

I was famished and physically weak during this period (1950–55). My father and I walked back from school during the lunch break and once he commented, You look like a sparrow. Look at Xavier; he is like a potato. Xavier was the son of the local grocer, Manickam Pillai, and he had plenty to eat. He was a close friend and later on, became a drawing master. I am told he lives in Vadakangulam after retirement. I used to be down with fever at least four times a year in my teens. My mother used to narrate the illnesses that I had undergone earlier of which I had little memory – typhoid, pneumonia and chicken pox (twice). She also used to recall with great compassion that she had to neglect me as a baby because my younger brother Mohan had arrived hardly thirteen months after I was born. She used to weep whenever I was taken away from the hospital after a visit. Such is

the stuff of which mothers are made. She had a special affection and fondness for me and in later years, she exhibited a great deal of pride in my scholastic and career achievements.

Once in a rare mood of admission of reality, my father told me, Durai, we are all on a starvation diet. All through his life, he was disappointed and frustrated that he could not give a better life to his family. He had expressed this sentiment in his letters to my mother when he left Vadakangulam (1953) to work in other parts of Tamil Nadu.

Response to adversities

Although semi-starved, we youngsters had enough fun and games. On both sides of my family, we had plenty of humour, we made innocent fun of people in the village, and there was laughter whenever the families of my uncles and aunts met together with their children. (There were two uncles on my mother’s side and two aunts from my father’s side living in the village at that time.)

The adverse circumstances seemed to have posed a challenge to us and our response was to study hard and prove ourselves. After my eldest brother, Raja Annan’s debacle in the Intermediate (pre-degree), we had taken our studies seriously. Rabi, Rani, and I were front runners in our classes. Mohan was supposed to be somewhat indifferent but later turned out brilliant results in college in Tuticorin. I used to get prizes both in languages and in general subjects. On one of those occasions (1954), during the school day celebrations, I had to receive these two prizes from the Bishop of Tuticorin. Before the function, Rabi came to me and said, You should say, ‘Thank you, My Lord’ every time you receive the prize from the Bishop. I rehearsed it mentally many times, but I became so tongue tied during the momentous occasion that what came out of my mouth was an unintelligible mumble, and the kindly Bishop merely smiled at my nervousness. The stage fright (also shyness in company) dogged me for many years in my life and I had to quell it by deliberate efforts to communicate comfortably with people.

The shyness, diffidence and timidity (I still have residues of them) were perhaps inherited from my father. We were also not permitted to speak in the presence of elders, nor encouraged to socialise. The only permitted company were our own classmates or cousins with whom we could play or hang around in front of our houses. We rarely brought friends into our houses. We had no sleepovers! I remember once I had asked my mother to permit me to go to my classmate, Kanagamani’s house for the night, to study before my exams in the school. She turned it down because Kanagamani lived in the East Street populated by Nadars.

Aspiration

Yet a puny lad, studying in a village school with no exposure to the outside world, with not enough to eat or wear, I still seemed to have some sixth sense or intuition about my future. The thought used to cross my mind occasionally that someday I would be an important man! There was no hope, basis or evidence at that point to support this audacious thought about myself. I do not know if I became an important man, but I am proud that, in the eyes of my parents, my family, my wife and children, I did prove that I could overcome the handicaps placed on me by my early circumstances. It was perhaps this intuitive feeling about me that fuelled my efforts, and furthered my passion to educate and improve myself through

self-discipline and focus on the goal of self-improvement. At that time, I had no idea of self-development and what it entailed.

My father insisted I learn Hindi as it would be an essential requirement for government service. I worked overtime on weekends till I mastered the strange Devanagari script and managed to pass the Prathmic examination. I read the Reader’s Digest, Time and Saturday Evening Post sent to my father and my eldest brother, Raja, by their American penfriends. I still remember the Reader’s Digest Condensed books that I read during this period – Pearl S Buck, John Steinbeck, James A Michener, John Gunther and so on. This reading opened up horizons of the mind for me (also for my brothers who were avid readers); perhaps not accessible to other students in my village. I acquired a good vocabulary in English although I could not speak it. Our medium of learning was Tamil, and so picking up fluency in spoken English had to await better opportunities. My Tamil was consistently good and later on, in my B.A., I got a First Class in Tamil as the Second Language.

Vadakangulam highlights

To reach Vadakangulam, one had to travel by bus from Tirunelveli for 60 kilometres towards Kanyakumari (the Cape), alight at Kavalkinaru Cross (Vilakku) and either walk or take a bullock cart to cover another three kilometres in the direction of Radhapuram. In the 1950s, there was a direct bus for Palayamkottai (twin town of Tirunelveli) which took three hours, with leisurely stops in Nanguneri, Valliyoor, Panagudi and Kavalkinaru. There was another bus from Nanguneri, a Vaishnava temple town 25 kms from Tirunelveli that arrived at 8.30 p.m. when most of the village was in darkness and people asleep. There was no electricity and the oil lamps on top of stone pillars in street corners died out around 8 p.m.

On moonlit nights, of course, one could see knots of people in every street sitting on their door steps and men, women and children carrying on parallel conversations. We used to hear plenty of ghost stories and crawl into bed with hideous images of ghosts, ‘mohinis’ and spirits confronting innocent men walking through the cemetery at night (why would anyone go there at night?). My maternal grandfather lived round the corner and on his door step, we heard from him his experiences as a Forest Ranger, when he had hair-raising encounters with ghosts in the forests of the Western Ghats.

Initial schooling

My life in the village was in three segments. The first one – after my birth – was very short. The family seems to have moved to Dindigul in Madurai district as my father was a teacher in a training school for teachers. My younger brother, Mohan, was born here just a year after me. We were brought up almost like twins. The Second World War was on at that time and my father decided to go to Madras for a year in 1945, to do his Bachelor’s degree in teaching (B.T.). So we came back to Vadakangulam. During this period, I went to the Teresa’s elementary school near the local church. Maybe it was the first standard, because we had no concept of nursery or kindergarten. I remember that there was no partition between one class and the other. My lady teacher was quite manly looking; dark and tall. I must have been dull and stupid because I got whacked with a stick every day for something or the other. It was a stick and not a cane, fresh from the neem trees that abounded within and outside the school. I have no other memory of this school.

I remember the day my father returned from Madras in the year 1946, and announced that he had been appointed Deputy Inspector of Schools and posted to Palayamkottai. One afternoon, he engaged a ‘Pleasure car’ and took us to Palayamkottai. Cars were called pleasure cars those days and I do not know when the ‘pleasure’ dropped out of it. I was seated in my father’s lap and was sick all the way. This allergy to travel has lasted for a lifetime. For the most part, it got cured but still persists on winding roads. For the next three years, we were with father on his transfers from Palayamkottai to Athur near Salem, and then to Vathalakundu in Madurai district. Father was then fed up with his transfers and sent the family to Palayamkottai while he continued with his government career for a while.

Journey in a coal fired bus

In Palayamkottai, I did my sixth standard in Christhu Raja Vidyalayam run by Brothers of the Sacred Heart. During summer holidays, my mother’s brother, Aruldas, came on a visit from Vadakangulam. I was his godson and he was rather fond of me. He asked my mother to send me with him for a week or two. I travelled with him in a bus that was literally stripped of all frills. It had no outer body. All useable materials seemed to have gone into the war effort. People sat in rows of seats and they were exposed to the elements. The bus ran on coal gas, an innovation to meet the fuel shortages of wartime. A five foot tall cylinder was placed vertically at the back of the bus. Coal was filled into it, it was fired half an hour before departure and air was fed into it by the cleaner who had to crank a contraption placed on the rear foot board. The grinding sound of this cranking machine announced the impending departure of the bus. The smell of coal gas pervaded the bus and the passengers in the back seat of the bus bore the brunt of the heat that radiated through the back panel of the bus.

I remember the three hour travel for one thing only, apart from my travel sickness. It was the relentless wind that assailed my face continuously and nearly kept me panting for breath. On arrival, I was delivered to my grandfather. It was June 1950 and I was fated to live in Vadakangulam for the next five years.

One has a peculiar feeling while on a holiday, when the entire family lands up after you have had two weeks in the resort and they tell you that they have come to stay. Till then, I was the VIP guest invited to lunch by my uncles and aunts. So I saw with some misgivings my mother arriving with the rest of the brood and occupying our own house in Middle Street, called the South Car Street for postal or invitation purposes, a stone’s throw from Grandfather’s house, after a sharp left turn from the Street Corner Well, as it was called.

Mother was accompanied by Raja and Rabi (elder brothers), Rani (elder sister), Mohan and Sekar (younger brothers) and Prema and Jeyam (younger sisters). She promptly went and met Fr Susainathar, Correspondent of Schools for Tuticorin Diocese who happened to be visiting, and negotiated a teacher’s job for father in St Teresa’s High School. So father took leave from his government job and came home to live with us.

My eldest brother, Raja, had been doing his Intermediate in St Xavier’s college, Palayamkottai, and was awaiting his results. Rani had to join the Aloysius Convent School in Tuticorin. After a term, she came home to stay for the next two years as she was homesick and there was no girls’ school in Vadakangulam. The rest of the children were admitted in different classes.

The church and its history

The Holy Family Church occupied the pride of place in Vadakangulam. It faced the bazaar street on the East which ran north-south and divided the village into two sectors. The eastern sector (literally East Street or Keezha Theru) housed the Nadars, and the western sector (West Street or Mela Theru) was the area for the dwellings of Pillaimars (Vellalas). On the West and South of the church, there were streets running parallel to the brick compound walls of the Church and the priest’s bungalow. On the southern side was the catechist’s quarter, the convent and the girls’ higher elementary school of the nuns of the Seven Dolours’ Convent. This order was dedicated to Our Lady who had suffered seven sorrows – when Jesus was lost in Jerusalem as a twelve year old, when he was flogged and made to carry the cross, crucified and so on. In her pictures in the convent, her face wears a dolorous expression. My mother used to make fun of women for exhibiting such an expression saying, She looks like the dolorous mother. The nuns had to meditate on these dolours and avoid laughing and casual chit-chatting or talking to outsiders. I am happy to say that nowadays, the nuns have changed a great deal and are more natural.

The church had been constructed in a small way in the mid –1850s and it had separate zones reserved for Vellalas, Nadars and other (lower) castes. It was reconstructed in the 1900s with two halves, one for Vellalas and the other for Nadars and the rest. The parish priest entered the church from one of the front entrances, walking through a corridor with walls on both sides till he emerged at the altar. Neither group could see him walking through. In view of this funny arrangement, the church was known as the ‘Trouser Church’!

Caste prejudice seems to have been the base of this otherwise well-ordered village. Vellalas had a supercilious attitude towards Nadars and referred to them as ‘Shanaars’. The latter smarted under the segregation and had a running conflict with the church on this score. Finally, Father Causanal, a French Jesuit Priest, in the year 1911, got the approval of the Bishop of Trichy to break down the dividing wall. The Vellalas took the matter to court. The lower level courts upheld their claim and ordered rebuilding of the wall. Fr Causanal appealed to the High Court of Madras which upheld his action. Thus, the curtain was rung down on the infamous dividing wall in the centre of the church.

The church was big for a village, had two spires which housed two huge bells imported from France. Thick ropes had to be pulled by a muscular sacristan and as the bell tilted fully to the sides, the rope went up pulling the sacristan up and then he would hang in mid-air for a second before coming down. On important occasions, both bells had to be rung and one would see an urchin assisting the sacristan going up and down with the rope rather helplessly.

About fifteen nuns of the nearby Convent were the mainstay of the church services. They used to file out of their convent half an hour before Mass or evening vespers, move purposefully like penguins in their black-and-white habits, arrive at their reserved corner, unroll the grass mats, pick up their prayer books or song books and start chanting the preparatory prayers or litany. We boys playing around in the church compound usually entered the church only when we sighted the priest emerging from his bungalow and walking towards the sacristy.

Our Lady’s statue, kept quite high above the altar, was about four feet tall, clothed in silk with a golden crown, and had a baby face. It was the focus of the congregation and its multifarious prayers. Tradition attributed some miraculous nature to this statue. A century back, according to the story, a white woman was praying alone in the church when she suddenly noticed tears issuing out of the eyes of the statue. She was quite alarmed, rang the church bells hard, and the entire village gathered and saw this miracle. They understood that the Lady was distressed for some reason and so redoubled their devotions, and the phenomenon never repeated itself.

On many an occasion, when I was saying my prayers, I used to strain my eyes focusing on the statue’s eyes to detect any flow or seepage of tears. There must have been many others who fondly wished to see an encore of the vision the white lady had been blessed with.

Looking back, at this stage of my life, my religious