Elusive target

Intro: So you thought .303 rifle was a living relic? Wrong. If
terrorists outperformed the Indian police on 26/11, it was due to
inadequate training and poor marksmanship, says C Shivakumar

Boom! A bullet whizzes past the target as Special Task Force police
constable S Karuppu fires from his .303 Lee Enfield rifle at a
distance of 100 metres. Lying on his stomach, the wiry cop, with a
hand on the trigger, and legs sprawled over the ground, aims again and
fires. The bullet narrowly misses the bull's eye, but strikes the
target.
"I usually score an average of 70 to 80 marks in shooting. And of the
10 rounds I fire, two to three find the bull's eye," says the
policeman with brimming confidence.
Karuppan enjoys shooting. Unlike the average policeman, he is well
versed in several weapons including AK47, .303, 7.62 SLR, machine gun
and pistols. And more importantly, he has the privilege to fire more
than 120 rounds a year with visits to firing range once a month. He is
the lucky few to enjoy this privilege in India where an ordinary
policeman gets only 10 rounds to fire and in some states hardly any.
Points out a top policeman from the Bureau of Police Research and
Development (BPRD): "On an average, the Indian police personnel have
poor shooting skills. In order to develop good marksmanship, one needs
to practise every week. That is not possible in India."
And it sounds true, particularly in the wake of the Mumbai attacks,
where the cops failed to contain the 10 gunmen who paralysed India's
financial capital for more than 60 hours.

Marksmanship
The policemen fired at the terrorists, but failed to find their
target. The bullets whizzed past the attackers and the blame was
entirely put on lack of quality weapons and the outdated Second World
War weapon .303 Lee Enfield rifle without questioning the marksmanship
of the police.
"The rifle is good if the hand is good. This (.303) could have been
very good against the terrorists who had some kind of protective gear
and were at a long distance. Obviously, it fires single shots, so the
terrorists with their automatic guns had an advantage. But from a
distance, the police had an advantage and they failed to capitalise on
it due to their lack of sharp-shooting skills," says Prof Arvind Varma
of Indiana University and a BPRD consultant.
If the policeman does not have the marksmanship to kill (or even hit)
a suspect at 20 to 30 metres with aimed fire from assault rifle, there
is little chance he can control the automatic fire from an assault
rifle or a sub-machine gun effectively. Varma, who is also the author
of The Indian Police: A Critical Evaluation, blames the lack of
adequate training for cops' poor marksmanship. In the United States or
Europe, the gunmen would not have been allowed the freedom of movement
they were in Mumbai, where they were able to walk past police officers
firing at them without being hit.

Training
"The greatest gap in capability between Indian and European or Indian
and American forces is not the gap between elite counter-terrorism
forces, but the gap at the individual street cop level. This is
significant because street cops are a critical line of defence against
terrorists," says a Stratfor report.
Former BPRD chief K Koshy, who retired last month, feels the police
lacks training as compared to those in the US and Europe. "We have
nearly 50 per cent of training time allotted to drill, which is
negligible in those countries. Also, we teach more theory than any in
the world. All sorts of high-sounding substance are included in the
syllabus, more for being politically correct than due to any
scientific reasons," he says.
The director of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy in
Andhra Pradesh K Vijay Kumar says, "What the US learnt 50 years back,
we are learning now. There is a need to upgrade the entire training
schools. Competent policemen should be posted in colleges and their
tenure should be for a longer time."

A reliable weapon
But several top policemen refuse to blame.303 Lee Enfield rifle for
police shortcomings and some say it still is useful in the Indian
context. Koshy claims the rifle is one of the "best ever made. Very
accurate, very effective and do not miss or jam."
C Sylendra Babu, Inspector General of Police, Tamil Nadu STF, says the
rifle is more apt for India conditions. "In India policing is about
crowd disturbances, controlling the rioting masses. During such kind
of incidents it would be better if we use the .303 rifles, which fires
from a distance and is much handy in controlling riots and crowds."
He wonders why the police did not effectively use the rifle to fight
the terrorists from a distance during the 26/11 attack or engage them.
And this brings to the fore the debate for the adoption of 'active
shooter' training programme where the shooter should be engaged and
neutralised as quickly as possible without giving assailant more
chance to kill more people. A Stratfor report says such kind of
training could make a difference in a Mumbai-type of attack, where
there may not be sufficient time or resources for a specialised
tactical team to respond.
And Koshy agrees. "There is a need to develop a small group of
sharpshooters and SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) teams in each
town and a set of shooters with better aptitude and skills in each
police station," he says. But Verma feels the Indian beat police must
remain and operate without arms.

Funds crunch
Meanwhile, the government is preparing a strategy for policing the
seven mega-cities -- Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad,
Hyderabad and Bangalore. An amount of Rs 15 crore has already been
sanctioned to identify what it takes to make these cities safe.
But despite the government-initiated modernisation scheme, the
expenditure per policeman remains fairly low.
"The real threat to our nation is not from outside but from inside,"
says Vijay Kumar. "The defence gets a major chunk of the budget while
the police force is left with a measly sum which is barely enough
after paying the cops' salaries."
Another senior cop feels there is no political support for
modernisation scheme, except lip service. "The director generals lack
the financial powers to spend the money. Sometimes funds never reach
the police," says another policeman.
The total annual expenditure on police training for all states and
union territories was Rs 273 crore for 2006-07. And all India average
spend on training was a measly Rs 1,975 per policeman.
For 2007-08, the government has allocated a sizable amount for
modernising the police force. The problem most of the cops believe lay
with the Home Ministry's procurement system.

Bureaucratic hurdles
But a senior policeman feels the problem is very complex and reasons
are deep rooted. "Cut throat competition, lack of proper appreciation
of requirements, corruption, vested interests, archaic procedures also
matter," he says.
India is also one of the least policed places in the world with 126
officers per 100,000 when compared with 225-550 police officers per
100,000 people in the Western countries.
"If we consider the fact that 85 per cent of police head constable and
constables, who in strict sense of the term can't be considered
comparable to the West, the situation becomes abysmal," says a senior
policeman.
"To transform the police force into effective instruments for
maintenance of internal security, the government should realise that
police is not an unavoidable, but wasteful expenditure which should be
kept minimum. In fact police is an investment in infrastructure," says
Koshy.
"Like we need power, road, water and education for development, we
also need peace and an atmosphere of freedom from fear of crime to
encourage development and to attract foreign investment. Police has
thus no right to be in the non-plan budget," says the senior police
officer.
-shivakumarshreya@gmail.com