#WATCH | On protesters allegedly targeting senior police officers, Delhi Police ACP Arshdeep Singh says, "I would like to say this: a senior police officer once remarked that we, too, could have stayed safely at home; we were also raised by others with great hardship. My point is that protesters often forget—while they are students, we, including our female staff, are someone’s children or daughters too. The level of disrespect shown here often involves dragging female staff into the fray. You may have recently seen instances where—amidst the protesters, including those with religious agendas or even drunkards—attempts were made to pull them in; they were pushed, manhandled, and even bitten. Senior officers, in particular, are targeted. As I mentioned earlier, the aim is to target them to demotivate and demoralise the force, causing the entire force to lose morale.
Well, look—I wear a blue cap or a blue lanyard. Since everyone knows these signify the rank of a Gazetted Officer (GO), they recognize us. Then, they try to target, push, heckle, and malign us—doing all sorts of things to demotivate us. We face verbal abuse—not just directed at us, but at our families as well. Yet, we simply operate within the framework of the Constitution; we are merely upholding the oath we took. We are simply discharging the duties assigned to us by law.
We have recently noticed—and you might have seen that we cracked a case involving an independent journalist who had targeted a senior officer in this manner—that details emerging from the ongoing investigation suggest a pattern of targeting senior officers. As I mentioned earlier, if you target senior officers and demoralise them, how can they lead the force? The force would then be unable to follow the right direction. And if senior officers step back from the frontline, the force will obviously retreat as well. This was precisely the modus operandi."