Lessons from Malegaon Probe

There are many who are criticizing police for going hard on so called "Hindu terrorists" and others who are criticising these critics in turn, each labeling the other as traitors or political manipulators.
We do not know what was right or wrong. BJP is setting a bad precedent for so called secularists also, now if there is any anti terrorist investigation against Muslims or minorities during the BJP rule, BJP would have to face the same criticisms which it is labeling right now on congress.
This does not mean that the methods of ATS are not flawed and they are not to be criticized or to be called to explain certain confusing and deliberately misleading aspects of the probe. But it also hints that similar travesty of justice would have been carried out when several Muslims have been held in the past.
I have many friends of the patriotic sort who have supported heavy handed and preferably extrajudicial actions (even killing in encounters) against terrorists when they happened to be Muslims. The same pattern of action is expected against other criminals too. They also invariably concede that our police forces are extremely corrupt and inhuman. But somehow they could not connect these two points to see that the supporting police force in these incompetent and cowardly encounters done mainly to get promotions or please political masters would not only lead to suffering of many innocent people and their families in particular but would also lead to general insensitivity of police force and people towards human rights and rule of law to an extent that no one would expect that these agencies should be transparent and accountable to the most ordinary Indians, who usually shiver with fear with the very thought of going to police stations. For every real terrorist caught (if at all) there would be thousands of ordinary people who would be harassed by our corrupt police force. The sense of power and invincibility police gets when it is not questioned will lead to immense torture of ordinary poor and downtrodden who will be routinely rounded up, tortured into confession to 'crack' the case. And then there will be many even in middle class who will be facing the similar prospects just because they have offended someone.
According to a human right group there have been 7500 deaths in past 5 years in India in police custody, though the actual numbers might be far higher.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7474656.stm This does not include the people killed everywhere in police firing during demonstartions and crimes and deaths resulting from the nexus of police and criminals. Some estimates put the cases of torture by police every year at around 1.8 million
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7689491.stm
The terror of police is much more prevalent and pervasive than the terror of terrorists. 99% won't know anyone who has been directly affected by terrorism, it is so rare, while almost all of us would know someone or the other who has been harassed by police. It will be hard to find a village or town where someone or the other has not been tortured by police in recent memory. Still we and our media keep on suppporting police against the innocent victims caught in the name of terrorists. Now since so called 'Hindu terrorists' have been caught, it is time not to attribute political motives but to ask for greater accountability and transparency from the police-whether the accused are Muslims or Hindus. We should expect them to follow the rule of law themselves first and they should be expected to operate within the constraints of our constitution and human rights to nab the criminals. Of course it would be tougher but let us realize that this is the only way to do things. Apart from victimization and framing of thousands of innocents accused from the petty to very serious crimes as terrorism, it also breeds a culture of incompetence where police forces loose their capacity to solve a case (if at all they have), to bring real culprits to justice and to challenge our judicial system to perform better. While the innocents will be trapped behind the bars caught in maze of judiciary- real criminals will prevail and prosper. They system would be inevitably skewed in the favour of real criminals- and the crime rates would be bound to go up.
I often hear that the job of police will be very difficult then, but is it not precisely why they get salary and power. Right now would be constables have the attitude of harassing innocents and making money, let them be aware of the situations in which they would have to operate and perform, and then let them decide to join the police force or not.