Ensure only those eligible get police protection: Bombay HC

Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Wednesday directed the state government to streamline the process of providing police protection to people to ensure that only those who deserve police protection get it. The high court also directed the state to file affidavit within three weeks, stating the steps taken by it to streamline the process.

The court had earlier said that after examining the details given by the state government, it was revealed that 795 individuals in the state and 248 in Mumbai, were given police protection.

According to the PIL, around 1,000 police personnel are deployed to provide protection to private persons in the state, out of which 600 of them are deployed in Mumbai. A division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur was hearing a PIL filed by advocate Sunny Punamiya seeking recovery of money from the VIPs, politicians and film actors and private people who avail police protection but do not pay the government.

On Wednesday, the Bombay high court reiterated that police should not be treated as private security guards and emphasised that maintaining law and order is primary job of police force.

The court said, “If tomorrow there is an emergency situation like last month’s floods and everything comes to a standstill. Then, all the police personnel will have to be deployed for relief duty. Can these thousand policemen also be called for such relief work? If they were not providing protection to private persons, then they could also have worked for the common people.”