There is still no word on the four/five terrorists who committed a war-provoking atrocity on tourists at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) a month back. No one doubts they were trained, armed, and motivated by Pakistan-based entities, but no one knows who they were or how they managed it.
It is not easy for the security forces to catch (or even identify) anyone because such investigations and manhunts are painstaking processes. However, rarely are the perpetrators of terrorism in Kashmir ever caught.
For instance, the government says it killed at least seven terrorists responsible for the April 2019 bombing of a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy in Pulwama that killed 40 personnel. It claimed Masood Azhar’s (the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed) relative was involved. These are unverifiable claims. All the government really knows is that a youngster from Pulwama was involved—his father offered to beg forgiveness from New Delhi (he was spurned).
That the terrorists got away also brings up the uncomfortable possibility of a policeman’s involvement in the Pahalgam incident.
On January 24, 1992, two days before BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi and his Ekta Yatra lieutenant Narendra Modi were to unfurl the flag at Lal Chowk in Srinagar, a bomb exploded at police headquarters (PHQ) during a high-level meeting. The bomb was reportedly planted in a false ceiling in the Director General of Police’s (DGP) room. It severely injured the DGP, JN Saxena, as well as the Border Security Force’s (BSF) Ashok Patel, Veerana Aivalli, and Rajan Bakshi of the Kashmir police, and the CRPF’s MK Singh.
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It was stunning—if terrorists could strike inside PHQ then no place was safe. The bomb was alleged to have been smuggled inside a chicken. It was obviously an inside job. Bakshi suffered pellets in his groin for which he had to come to Delhi for treatment.
You can’t lay blame for the lapse, and several of the officers are no more. However, the late JN Saxena was perhaps the wrong choice for police chief. The then J&K Chief Minister, Dr Farooq Abdullah, asked Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director M.K. Narayanan for a police chief and got long-serving IB officer JN Saxena.
Known entities in Kashmir
It is unusual for a good intelligence officer to make a good police chief. For one, he should know the State police force and that familiarity only comes with time. Saxena, originally not from J&K, had replaced a Kashmiri police chief, Ghulam Jeelani Pandit, and was an unknown entity to the 75,000-strong rank-and-file.
The badly injured Saxena was replaced the following day by BS Bedi, who faced, in April 1993, a strike by about 1,000 policemen. They were protesting the killing of a colleague, a constable posted at the Hazratbal shrine, by indiscriminate army firing. The protestors took control of the police control room (PCR), and their strike lasted a week, till the army sent in a deployment to retake the PCR.
These incidents showed clearly how deep militancy in J&K was. India faced an uphill struggle in regaining the State—which it did, a large factor being the 1996 Assembly election.
A security jawan keeps vigil as voters queue up before a polling booth in Baramula constituency on May 23, 1996.
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THE HINDU ARCHIVES
As a crime reporter in the late 1980s, one lesson I learnt was that the police force’s frontline is its beat constables and local thanas. A friend in Delhi police, Amod Kanth, used to wax eloquent about Tokyo’s policing system, where the beat patrolman knew each and every resident and shopkeeper of his area.
If a Kashmiri youngster disappears from home, it is either because he has taken up arms or he is the victim of an extra-judicial execution. Then in a functioning police system, the local cops would get to know immediately and would pass the word to the relevant authorities.
Fractured police system
The problem in Kashmir—in the early 1990s, and possibly, today—is that there is a fracture between the top police leadership and the rank-and-file.
Many will argue that in J&K there is no laxity in discipline or toughness, and that there is a functioning chain of command. However, it is also the case that thanedaars and those below will smartly salute their superiors but when the superior leaves, it’s back to business as usual.
Trust between the rank-and-file in the Valley and India’s wider security establishment has been tenuous at the best of times. First, “mainland” officers have never trusted Kashmiris; and since 2014, the officers do not trust Muslims.
Kashmir’s policemen are personally under severe stress. After all, they and the local militants are from the same milieu, the same village, and even the same extended family. Kashmir’s political grievances, in their eyes, are just. At the same time, they are the first target in every nook and corner of the Valley. Still, many a cop has shown exceptional valour in the face of terrorist violence.
The top police leadership, hand-picked by a politically majoritarian Central government, shows little empathy for the rank-and-file. A retired DGP, for instance, who is high-profile on social media, makes intemperate public displays of majoritarianism. His years in J&K have taught him nothing.
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Such a chasm between the police leadership and the rank-and-file suits the political masters (J&K’s police is under the Lieutenant Governor, who reports to the Union Home Minister) who feel that an iron hand is needed to stamp out dissent and deal with political grievances. For them, it is my way or the highway to hell.
The local police force in any State is responsive to the State’s political leadership. Kashmir overcame militancy primarily thanks to the 1996 election, which itself was facilitated by behind-the-scenes political coaxing and intelligence work. In J&K currently, however, you have a hollow political arrangement—the former state is still a Union Territory, and its Chief Minister is little more than a Mayor.
It is only a proper political restoration that will return morale to the local police, which is the only way you will truly make a dent against terrorism. The security forces will then find it easier to prevent the killing of innocent tourists and to catch the terrorists responsible.
Aditya Sinha is a writer living on the outskirts of Delhi.
Source:https://frontline.thehindu.com/columns/kashmir-security-crisis-pahalgam-attack-police-trust-article-370/article69605289.ece