How Mumbai police gears up to fight the evils of Amavasya and black magic

Almost every police station in Mumbai is in the throes of activity when it gets a new senior police inspector and not just because the rank and file is eager to please the new leadership The usual anxiety of what the next boss is going to be like aside the one task that is of paramount importance is the chairWe are not fibbing senior police officers are known to carry the same chair to every new office and posting they bag The reason their predecessorrsquos chair could be ldquounluckyrdquo for them Some officers in Mumbai who have been using the same chair for 15 years getting it refurbished as many times as is necessaryDespite monumental advancements in science and technology and Maharashtra being the only state to have a dedicated law against the practice of black magic the Maharashtra Police in 2023 harbours chuckleworthy superstitions This extends from the chairs to the way they arrange their office how their work day is divided to how the duties are assignedBlind faith and the police force became news recently when Director General of Police Vijaya Kumar Uttar Pradesh issued a circular instructing all his personnel to track new moon or Amavasya days to plan their policing duties In Mumbai too policemen tell us officers on night duty are especially jumpy from 12 to 1 am and there are some who prefer not to step out at this hour at all ldquoIt gets doubly worse if they must step out and a black cat ambles acrossrdquo a police inspector posted in western Mumbai tells middayHamid Dabholkar and Jaywant HargudeThe Mumbai Police comprises personnel hailing from across Maharashtra and each new recruit brings his or her own beliefs The usual practices of hanging lime and chillies above doors avoiding colours like black and having chairs face a ldquoluckyrdquo direction are so commonplace that they are not regarded as out of the ordinaryAnd some practices are so ingrained they have become part of protocol For instance Station House duty is assigned to a different officer every week and the Station House officerrsquos chair is nothing short of sacred for the police station ldquoNobody else is allowed to sit on that chair even if the officer is away and there are people waiting to report their grievances It is regarded as a harbinger of bad luck if a cop sits on the chair when it is not his or her turn for Station House dutyrdquo says a constableThe Station House officer is only supposed to tackle fresh incoming cases while sitting in the chair No old or pending work can be done because it is believed that this will add to the common nightmare of all policemenmdashpending casesldquoEven if the officer has a pressing chargesheet to complete or a report to send he will move to another chair and table where he can finish the work before coming back to the Station House officerrsquos deskrdquo the constable addsAs far as chairs go though the unluckiest chair is regarded to be that of an officer who gets arrested for graft by the Anti Corruption Bureau His chair is all but quarantined cops tell usTill nearly a decade ago the Mumbai Police was also plagued by a particularly archaic practice of sacrificing a rooster in the police station premises after which its meat was cooked and eaten on the occasion of Gatari Amavasya the last no moon night before the month of Shravan in the Hindu calendar This was done to supposedly ward off evil influences from the police station and its entire jurisdiction When things got out of hand the top brass decided to issue a circular before every Gatari warning of strict action if the practice was conductedldquoThe ironyrdquo says anti blind faith activist Hamid Dabholkar ldquois that our country has literally set foot on the moon but we continue to look for the auspicious and inauspicious in lunar cyclesrdquoHamid like his father the late rationalist and thinker Dr Narendra Dabholkar has dedicated his life to fighting superstition and blind faith and currently heads the Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti a nonprofit that holds workshops to combat blind faith For him he says to learn that the investigating team probing his fatherrsquos murder used an Ouija board when the investigation did not yield any clues was ironicalDabholkar was shot dead on August 20 2013 while he was on a morning walk near the Omkareshwar Temple in Pune Ten years down the line the Central Bureau of Investigation is probing alleged links between his killing and those of activist Govind Pansare writer MM Kalburgi and journalist Gauri LankeshAs retired Assistant Commissioner of Police Jaywant Hargude puts it there is after all a human being in the uniform A veteran of the Crime Branch and the encounter era Hargude says he spent most of his career patrolling the streets with no interference from lunar or feline influences ldquoThere came a point when if a cat crossed my path during my night rounds I was very sure Irsquod catch a most wanted criminalrdquo he chucklesEven senior officers are not immune midday finds Several top cops after taking over a new posting immediately remodel the entire office moving the desk and chair to a different position than the way their predecessor had arranged them If junior cops move chairs the top cops move all the furnitureNot all remodelling though is out of blind faith we find A senior inspector in charge of a central Mumbai police station told midday that he installed a fish tank in his office directly in his line of sight ldquofor peace of mind but not my ownrdquoldquoWhenever my seniors come visiting they sit in my chair as per protocol It helps to have something in front of them to keep them calm so that they donrsquot yell at merdquo he says tongue firmly in cheek