Slipper Garland theft accused paraded Bare-Chested in Jammu; SSP orders probe over Police misconduct

Jammu, Jun 24: A man accused of robbing a patient’s attendant was paraded on the streets here with his hands tied and shoes garlanded around the neck and briefly made to sit on a moving police vehicle’s bonnet after getting caught outside a city hospital on Tuesday, an official said.
Condemning the incident, Jammu’s Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Joginder Singh ordered a departmental inquiry into the matter.
As a video surfaced on the Internet purportedly showing several onlookers cheering the act, several social media users questioned the legality of the action.
This was the second incident in a month in Jammu city when a crime accused faced such a situation. On June 11, three persons accused in a shooting incident in Gangyal Chowk on the outskirts of Jammu were beaten up by police personnel in public after they were caught.
Bakshi Nagar Police Station SHO Azad Manhas, under whose watch the latest incident occurred, said the accused is a notorious criminal and part of a gang that was recently busted. The accused was inebriated and was caught following a scuffle and a long chase, he added.
A man who was robbed of Rs 40,000 while buying medicines for his patient a couple of days ago, identified the accused outside a hospital in the heart of the city and confronted him, police said.
The accused retaliated by attacking the man with a knife, causing injuries, and tried to escape, the SHO said, adding the police personnel patrolling the area went after the accused and nabbed him.
After getting caught, the accused’s hands were tied up and made to wear a footwear garland by some locals who had joined the police in the chase. He was paraded and made to sit on the bonnet of the police vehicle briefly with a public address system announcing his arrest while being taken to the police station.
Several onlookers raised slogans in favour of the police officer for humiliating the accused in full public gaze, drawing criticism from various quarters.
Senior Superintendent of Police, Jammu, Joginder Singh said the action of the police personnel was “unprofessional, unbecoming of the members of a disciplined organization”, and calls for a stern departmental action.
“In order to ascertain actual facts, a preliminary enquiry is hereby ordered and entrusted to SDPO (Sub-divisional police officer) City North, Jammu who will enquire into the matter and submit his findings to this office within a week’s time positively,” the SSP said in an order.
The national convener of the Jammu and Kashmir Students Association, Nasir Khuehami, took to X to say, “Police are not mobs. They are the custodians of the law. The duty of an SHO is to investigate, not adjudicate to uphold justice, not to dispense punishment through public spectacle.”
“Such crude display of ‘instant justice’ erodes public trust, delegitimises the institution and pushes our democracy one step closer to the abyss of lawlessness. If this is the image of policing we allow to flourish, what separates the protector from the oppressor? What separates law from vengeance?”
He said the incident reeks of medieval vigilantism rather than constitutional policing.
“Such grotesque public humiliation, carried out in full public view, is not just a violation of the law. It is an assault on human dignity and the very principles that underpin our justice system,” the student leader said.
He added that parading an accused in such a dehumanising manner is in blatant contempt of Supreme Court directives and amounts to custodial torture and public shaming.