“Assam doesn’t need it, as much as we need an NRC [National Register of Citizens] type of exercise in Delhi”, a policeman from the Delhi Police told me. “It is the illegal immigrants and the ‘Muslims areas’ who are responsible for the crime, you see how things change when we survey them out. Why don’t you help? You are a research scholar, why don’t you put up a proposal [with the Police administration] for a survey like that?”[1]
A crime mapping platform established by the Delhi Police to algorithmically predict crime in the city works in an institutional setting where policemen believe that certain communities in specific spaces are the reason for the rising crime in the city. During our interaction, the policeman I spoke with brought out the crime maps of the previous days in which, I pointed out, the so-called crime prone ‘Muslim areas’ looked absolutely crime free. “What would they have to steal in their own areas? They go out and commit crimes in other rich areas. Also, they don’t want the police spotlight in their own areas, that’s why they go out and do what they have to do.” The process of othering is a stepping stone in inflicting violence. Only when a community, or a people, is othered by being called vermin[2], anti-national, ‘tukde tukde gang’[3] or downright criminal, does violence on them…
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