India, July 26 -- In the climax of Singham, the cornered villain appeals to the director general of police. The reply is now folklore: "DGP hai hi kahan? Woh toh mast so raha hai." On record, the chief lay sedated; in reality, he stood in that room-one uniformed family protecting its own. Fifteen years later, Chandigarh has inverted the plot. On paper, everyone is awake: Rosters are full, nakas are manned and budgets are consumed. In truth, the force sleeps-and this time, it is citizen's family under threat. Look at the scoreboard: Daylight shootings in Sector 14, Sector 9, and now Sector 11, where a cashier took 13 bullets in a crowded market just steps from a police chowki. The killers drove across the city while officers stood at checkpoints. And where goes the force's energy while bullets fly? Traffic challans-a blitz so relentless that residents now call the city "Challangarh." Cameras that could track criminals are instead mapping wallets. I write not from newspaper clippings, but from my own case files. Behind each is a family that trusted the uniform, only to run from pillar to post for nothing. The FIR that took a court order: A family suffered a planned home invasion-hammers, smashed doors and death threats, all captured on CCTV and witnessed by policemen. Yet the FIR took 15 days to register. The investigation then stalled for nearly a year until the Punjab and Haryana high court intervened. The departmental inquiry's response? Branding the victim a "habitual complainant." The missing daughter: A 21-year-old disappeared, but police recorded only a DDR entry and declared she had "left of her own will." Only after persistent follow-ups was her phone traced and she found within days. The capability existed; the will did not. Failure to protect children: A sports academy POCSO complaint took six weeks to become an FIR, with police violating prescribed procedures while attempting to close the case. The theft nobody would register: A Kishangarh tenant woke up to find his phone and valuables stolen. Police refused an FIR, blamed the victim and redirected him to an online portal. These cases reveal one pattern: The system's weight falls on the victim. A turned-away citizen stops reporting; a harassed witness stops speaking. Trust is a police force's greatest intelligence. When it collapses, criminal elements fill the vacuum. The Sector 11 shooters read that signal long before pulling the trigger. To be fair, the average constable is not the villain. Junior ranks endure gruelling rosters, sleepless weeks and low pay, making effective policing difficult. Yet Chandigarh transforms when strong leadership demands accountability. Kiran Bedi's 44-day tenure in 1999 revamped beat policing and streamlined traffic, while former DGP Surendra Singh Yadav held investigating officers and SHOs accountable for delayed chargesheets. But the reforms proved short-lived. Operationalise e-FIRs: Enforce electronic FIRs under Section 173(1) of the BNSS with strict digital tracking to end delays in registration. Audit registration: Mandate weekly SSP audits comparing complaints with FIRs in cognizable cases. Refusal to register an FIR must invite disciplinary action. Smart policing: Replace redundant nakas with CCTV-based predictive policing using crime data and monthly heat-map reviews-similar to New York's CompStat model. Restore beat policing: Assign named constables to fixed sectors with adequate rest and regular hot-spot patrols. Enforce time-bound SOPs: Monitor investigations and review acquittals to identify delayed or weak chargesheets. Clean up thanas: Keep officers facing serious criminal allegations off station duty until cleared through time-bound inquiries. In Singham, the sleep was fiction and the vigilance was real. In Chandigarh, the vigilance is the fiction. Its citizens-and its exhausted constables-are waiting for it to wake up and play its part....