The government has defined a clear-cut policy to reduce excessive security cover to the leaders and purge the police of political influence, Singh said here last evening.

"A beginning has been made by cutting the security cover to politicians in Delhi and the states have been told to follow the suit," Singh claimed.

Earlier speaking after releasing a book, Police Aur Samaj by Meenakshi Swami, Singh said the nature of violence has changed adversely with increasing "material pursuit" in society and only citizens could check the "direct influence" of politicians in investigation of cases.

"At many places people have stopped transfers of honest police officers and boycotted politicians who tried to exert influence on them," the home secretary said.

However, the police should also respect "themajesty of a sovereign citizen" while carrying out investigation and bodily search, he added. Violence is mostly associated with men, but increasing representation of women in local civic bodies has led to qualitative change in police-public interaction, he said.

Speaking on the occasion, Police Research Bureau (PRB) director general B R Lal said, "answerability of police probe should be to the law and the citizens, and not to political authority as it exists in the country."

"Such an example is the Canadian city of Montreal where the police set-up is headed by a housewife," he said. Use of "third degree measures" in investigation by the police was mainly due to unavailability of modern scientific techniques like forensic and DNA tests, he said.

"Even the western nations used third degree measures in police investigations before forensic and dna tests came on the scene," Lal added.