A Retired Brigadier’s Death Throws Light on the Endemic Problems of a Rapidly Changing Dehradun

Dehradun is still shocked by the events of the morning of March 31 this year. A retired brigadier was shot dead on his usual morning walk in the quiet village road between Sinola and Johrigaon, on the outskirts of the main city. A couple of litchi and mango orchards, shops and homes line the lane. But over the last few years, this narrow lane has been used by the increasing traffic into Dehradun, for tourists to reach the Mussoorie road without using the main thoroughfare of Rajpur Road and for residents to go about their lives.

According to the police, Brigadier (retired) Mukesh Joshi, 70, was the innocent victim of a gun battle – from two speeding SUVs both with Delhi number plates – between customers and staff at nearby nightclub. A stray bullet hit him. Like many of Dehradun’s older residents, he paid the worst price for living in a small town which is growing into a city, without controls and planning in place.

The environmental damage to Dehradun from large-scale development is often discussed. In many ways, this has overshadowed all the other problems which afflict this town – inadequate policing, an over-dependence on tourism, lack of public transport and drainage to name just a few. Add to that, narrow roads, large groups of “outsiders” buying in with no concern for the ethos of the place, and you have a disaster on your hands.

Florence Pandhi, has live in Dehradun for six decades, and is a committed environmentalist. She has seen the changes for the worse. She says, “The death of Brigadier Joshi on his morning walk is a horrific blot on Dehradun's image. A comment I read yesterday in a podcast that the poor man was collateral damage in someone else's war, revulsed me at the insensitivity and callousness with which our social interlocutors treat these heinous crimes in society. This is the antithesis of the Dehradun that I made my home so many decades ago.”

Like Pandhi, Kusum Kohli, a retired schoolteacher, has lived in Doon for most of her life, and in fact lives not far away from where the incident happened. She is furious but frustrated, “We are fed up these huge cars, with outside number plates driving rashly and creating traffic jams on our narrow village roads. They should not be allowed on these roads, but GPS brings them here. There is no safety for residents as a result. These villages are full of senior citizens, many living alone.  We are vulnerable. It’s a nightmare to get out of your own house, to even get into your own lane. I get angry sometimes, but now I’m frightened to even speak to them because they might pull out a gun.”

These are legitimate fears, since Dehradun is no longer a sleepy town of schools, orchards and retirees. Aloke Lal, retired DGP and author, says that policing in the state has not kept up with its growth, and this is reflected in its capital city.

“In my experience, an upsurge in the demand for land leads to an upsurge in crime. Real estate prices are through the roof and that brings in money, both black and white. Rather than deal with the changes in the city, we see knee jerk reactions from the authorities. Transferring and suspending local officers, as Chief Minister Pushkar Dhami announced in this case, is an eyewash to mollify the public. It’s not a solution,” he says.

Lal affirms that Dehradun needs more feet on the ground, beat constables who are visible, and an effort to understand the history of the place and how it has changed, for policing to be more effective: “The system needs restructuring, because clearly what worked in the past is no longer working now.”

Uttarakhand remained the last state of India to continue with the old revenue policing system, where the land records officers, the local “patwari” was also in charge of law and order. It was only after the murder of hotel worker Ankita Bhandari in 2022, and the initial botched investigation, that promises were made to change the system. Although Lal says that changes are on but will take time, the remnants of the revenue policing system does not affect Dehradun and its immediate environs.

But assurances of better policing by chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and by the administration have clearly been too long in the planning pot and not out on the streets. Police are not visible in Dehradun’s adjoining villages, where this shooting took place. Nor are they visible on jungle roads, where cars park in the darkness so that people can drink late into the night - “Car-o-Bars” as they are known.

Pandhi also feels that past systems are no longer effective. “We are suffering the ravages of bad planning, over development and lawlessness. There is very little left of the town's ethos. What a sad state of affairs now exists in the capital of Uttarakhand.”

These changes for the worse are the bane of old-time residents. Bob Varma, a retired executive, has lived in Dehradun since the 1980s and cannot countenance what has happened to the city. “Dehradun has become terrible. There are too many guns around. And the police are nowhere to be seen. These nightclubs operate with loud music all night. There is lawlessness everywhere.”

Indeed, the large number of bars and restaurants which have been given permission to open in quiet residential areas cause further problems. Like the nightclub where the fight began, there appear to be no rules for such establishments. They are open all night – the bar in question was clearly open until 6.30 in the morning, because that is when the fight between the two carloads of staff and customers began.

The political establishment in the state has neglected both law and order as well as quality of life in the race for “development”. Certainly, development cannot be stopped. But Dehradun has seen little infrastructure growth which benefits the lives of residents, whether new or old-timers. Building projects are everywhere in the outskirts of the city, where roads are narrow, facilities are limited and old residents are unused to the pace of city life. This creates a total insider-outsider dichotomy, as well as resentment and as we have seen, violence and death. Everyone I have spoken to here is a senior citizen, aged from their late 60s to their 90s. They feel the horror of destructive change very deeply.

Sunita Rekhi is a retired schoolteacher and has lived in Doon her whole life. In her words, “I have spent over six decades in Doon. While every city's face changes with time, Doon has become unrecognisable. From a clean, green, peaceful and safe abode, the city has become a concrete jungle lacking all of the above. Senior citizens have a lot to navigate now – from traffic congestion to rising crime. It is not that Dehradun anymore of green hedges and grey hair now. Sad!”

And that is it, in a nutshell. Growth without planning and purpose has led to chaos, lawlessness and now, gun violence.

Ranjona Banerji is an independent journalist who writes on media and politics. She posts on X @ranjona.

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