I have always wondered why cops are given firearms - they could always kill brutally with the particularly fascinating form of language which passes for cop-English.

I was first exposed to it when I received a leave application from a subordinate staff:

“Most respected Sir,

With reverence and reference to the above, I most humbly submit that my wife has been suffering from various female diseases for the last so many years when I have been working under your kind control to the entire satisfaction of my superiors.

Kindly give me leave for 10 days and oblige for which act of your profound kindness I shall remain eternally grateful to your kind self, your most obedient servant, ...” Much of Police communication takes place over the wireless. A typical wireless message:

“The situation was extremely tense but the police tackled it with a cold brain” (meaning, thande dimagse niptaya) I once rushed with a huge contingent of force because of the following wireless transmission:

“One Miss Shikha is lying in a pool of blood on the tram line,” “One Miss Shikha is lying …, “one Miss Shikha …” I went and found there was no Miss Shikha, no commotion, no nothing. Turned out, the guy was trying to communicate: Ek chhoti gai (i.e., one Miss She Calf) tram line pe mari padi hai.

The Police wireless is very abuzz whenever there is a VIP movement and all the persons speak very excitedly. One day, during the movement of the then Chief Minister, every point of Police deployment en route was confirming the movement of the cavalcade. Suddenly, “The CM has just passed away, the CM has just passed away …,” meaning the cavalcade had just crossed that point.

The important cases like murder, dacoity, etc. are designated as SR (Special Report) cases, i.e., they are supervised and monitored by senior officers and are disposed off only with the approval of the Deputy Inspector General. The monitoring is mainly through progress reports (PRs) which are initiated by the Circle Inspector and goes up the line where the SDPO, Additional SP, SP and DIG keep recording their orders for investigative actions. There was a bit of dispute about one of my Circle Inspector’s English. He thought it was brilliant; everyone else thought it was unspeakable. For some reason, he used to give his English (and his imagination) full flow while writing the PR of rape cases:

“X espied Miss Y at a marriage function of mutually interdicted couple and their four eyes became interlocked into two pairs. This increased into an affair which prospered into physical proportions. This propinquity continued not once, not twice, but again and again over a period of five years and three months. When the inevitable marriage was summoned, X’s wife objected vociferously and X declined stertorously …”

Another Circle Inspector used the English language creatively to escape having too many SR cases. Of all the cases, Dacoity with Murder is considered the most heinous. Such cases are recorded under section 396 IPC and are expected to be supervised by senior officers without any loss of time. One morning I heard that there was such a case in a particular Police Station the previous night and rushed there. The Circle Inspector feigned ignorance and said that there was no SR case. I decided to check all the cases of the previous night and found that there indeed had been such a case. What he had done was, he had written up the case as an Unnatural Death case. Now, an Unnatural Death can range from anything from an accident through drowning to suicide, etc. and a specific case is not even registered. He had recorded a complaint under section 424 IPC which pertains to fraudulent removal of property which is a minor, bailable offence. When I berated him, he offered to start a case under section 404 IPC – dishonest misappropriation of property possessed by a person at the time of his death. Hello!

Pre-computer days, one had to depend on the steno to take dictation in short-hand and transfigure it on a typewriter. I had a steno who could understand any language provided it was Bengali so it was a laborious process. Mostly, whatever he produced had very little resemblance with what I had dictated and the first output had to be heavily edited, emended, corrected. Around the third effort, it would be somewhat passable. There was an urgent query from the CM’s office which needed to be replied to immediately so I asked the steno to do it carefully. I gave him dictation for about half an hour because I had to choose the words with some care. Suddenly I saw that his pencil was not moving on the notepad so I asked him how come. He politely informed me that he hadn’t understood a word of what I’d dictated in the previous 15 minutes or so, hence he had stopped taking it in short hand. I was flabbergasted and asked him why he didn’t stop me and ask. He said, “Sir, aapnaar flow ta nashto hoi jeto” [Sir, your flow of thoughts would have been disrupted]!!!

I didn’t say anything but was reminded of the Ajit-Raabert joke:

I have always wondered what would have happened if Shashi Tharoor had become a cop and was blessed to have that steno …

Have English, Will Kill (HEWK).