Unsuspecting people were picked up from the streets like a city authority would pick up a stray animal. They were herded on to the police trucks only to be thrown inside overcrowded prisons, whose capacity was only one sixth the number that they were made to hold. The indiscriminate nature and total insensitivity of the action are laid bare by the fact that many of the arrestees were either students, day labourers, small traders or street vendors; none of them was visibly any professional criminal or lumpen element. And this was done ostensibly to preempt the opposition's long march and the rally that was to follow at the end of the programme. And when the home secretary said that there was no ulterior motive behind the arrests he was perhaps ignorant of what his police force was doing or he was deliberately not being candid.

The fact that out of the almost ten thousand picked up randomly, a large number had to be released, immediately after their arrest, there being no ground for holding them, shows the dubious irrationality behind the action. This was a patent violation of not only the basic rights of a citizen, it was the very worst example of the flouting of the law by a state organ that is supposed to be its defender. Even worse is the allegation from several of the released victims that policemen found in their plight an opportunity to make a quick buck. Many were implicated in cases, out of just nowhere.

One wonders whether the government is capable of comprehending the immense long-term damage that has been wreaked upon these people? Who will answer for the physical and psychological trauma inflicted on them and the economic loss that most of them have had to suffer, other than the government of the day?

The police action has made the state look like a predatory monster which is antipodal to even any semblance of democracy. If after all this, anyone points to the 'crudity' of our image, could he or she be blamed for it?