New Delhi: Visuals of Monday’s protest showed a few men in civilian clothes, wearing little more than shirts, trousers and chappals, yet equipped with police helmets and actively engaged in crowd control, wielding lathis. The images attracted sharp criticism regarding who these people were and why they were not in uniform with name tags.A few such cops have had their addresses, Instagram handles and phone numbers splashed across social media. In some cases, users identified them wrongly. A cropped video of one such cop, identified on X and Instagram as Honey Dagar, was released on social media, sparking a debate on whether cops without uniform should be deployed for law and order duties.Pointing to the operational realities of modern law enforcement, serving and retired senior cops say police departments routinely maintain specialised detection units and intelligence wings whose mandates require them to operate covertly.“For these officers, the absence of a uniform is a professional necessity. They even keep a beard and wear T-shirt and jeans because of their work profile, which includes undercover operations and activities like gang infiltration,” said a senior cop.“When a DCP is asked to go to a particular spot with his team, he asks for a certain number of cops from the unit who have to rush in compliance with orders. These cops have to go too. The intent is generally logistical due to overwhelming crowd sizes rather than a deliberate strategy, as is often alleged,” he added.Officers also said that it is not a new practice. “Maintaining law and order is the priority at the time and everybody chips in… However, departmental action follows in cases where any wrongdoing is established irrespective of whether the policeman is in uniform or not,” said a retired top cop.While the law does not strictly prohibit the deployment of plainclothes personnel, senior cops agreed with the criticism that such characters introduce a layer of ambiguity into the already volatile atmosphere of public demonstrations.But their deployment, they added, becomes crucial given the possibility of anti-social elements infiltrating the protests and engaging in violence and arson. The special branch personnel, for instance, are mandated to mingle in the crowd to collect intelligence and keep tabs on miscreants.However, key spots are largely manned by uniformed personnel, said the cops. The police brass is, however, learnt to have asked the DCPs and other senior officers to discourage the practice in the ongoing protests unless the situation turns violent or there is a manpower shortage.
