And it is not just Sobhraj who has benefitted from the caring and nurturing qualities of the police. Dreaded UP don, Babloo Srivastava, is known to carry on his rather dubious ``business activities'' from beyond Tihar's walls thanks to the excellent telecommunications facilities that his captors seem to have extended to him. In Tihar, cellphones have become literally just that -- cell phones! Recently, the notorious criminal Romesh Sharma, presumed to have been locked away safely from polite society, even got to allegedly organise the murder of his girlfriend Kunjum from behind bars. How he could have done this without the tacit support of the police is anybody's guess.

There are a myriad otherexamples of this kind. There have been numerous instances where stern men in khaki were discovered to be singularly devoid of backbone, especially when it came to apprehending and punishing the powerful and the influential. While Jayalalitha is on record for having found the hospitality of Madras Central Jail not quite to her liking, fodder scandal accused Laloo Prasad Yadav found the Bihar policemen to be particularly courteous hosts -- as may be expected for a man whose wife happens to be the chief minister of the state. So comfortable was he that at one stage there were bitter complaints about this blatant example of positive discrimination and the police had to rush and actually deprive him of air-conditioners and the like. All this, as may be perceived, has not done very much for the image of the Indian police force. Clearly, there is an urgent need to brief them on the true nature of their jobs. Which, unless we are very mistaken, is to catch criminals, not cater to them.