The Kerala High Court on Friday asked the State’s District Police Chief to issue a circular to the entire police force asking them to be polite and use respectable language while interacting with the public.
Specifically, the court said that the police officers must not use terms such as eda and edi - used colloquially in Malayalam and considered to be impolite. The court said that the officers must not use such language in their official conversations with the public.
The order was issued by a single-judge bench of the Kerala High Court headed by Justice Devan Ramachandran. The court did so after hearing a plea filed by the father of a 15-year-old girl who complained that the police had used impolite language while interacting with his daughter during a vehicle check which is part of the COVID-19 protocol.
"Police must learn to use polite language with the public. The police have no right to call Eda or Edi. There should be decent behaviour. The DGP should issue a circular with proper guidelines," the court said, according to ANI.
The petitioner, in his plea, accused police officers of the Cherpu station in Thrissur district of using rude and impolite language while speaking to his daughter.
On the same day, while hearing another plea, the court also criticised the practice of gawking wages still prevalent in the state. Gawking wages, or nokkukooli, ,' is a practice by Kerala’s trade unions by labour unions in Kerala where wages have to be paid to headload workers for the loading and unloading done by other workers.
Hearing a plea by a businessman from Kollam, the court said that the rights of headload workers need to be protected legally.
The court also observed that the practice of gawking wages was damaging to the image of Kerala. It added that the practice had to be eradicated as it gives out a wrong perception about the state.