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| Though good at intelligence gathering, police need military strategy, responsiveness to crush militancy | | | BHARAT BHUSHAN
Early Times Report
JAMMU, Oct 18: Talking to this scribe about the Andar Achni dhok gunbattle between 60 RR and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in the treacherous Budhal hills of Rajouri, a senior police officer of the rank of ADGP Sunday "admitted" they largely depended on army in counter-insurgency (CI) operations.Andar Achni dhok is mountain-locked. In the day-long encounter there, the most-wanted LeT commander Abu Hamza and his deputy Abu Shamas got killed Saturday. Both were Pakistanis and had been making sustained efforts to expand LeT's activities in Rajouri by motivating local youth to join militant ranks.
"I won't be able to give you the exact details as mobile phones do not have any network in the hills. Army can only give you the minutest details you are looking for," he said.
The officer said army had the communication sets (satellite phones) which police did not have.He looked very honest and frank, without evasion, when he lamented that army even did not allow police to go to the encounter site till the whole operation was over. "We are on the second line of cordon and army leads from the front," he said and added army had better skills, strategies and infrastructure to fight terrorism.Almost every police officer here is in knowhow of this "fact" and discusses it privately but none has so far admitted it in public.It is a fact that like army, police too are confronted with a combat situation in J&K where they are pitted against battle-hardened militants, but a situation of that sort warrants a military-like precision and responsiveness.
Though in the two-decade-old militancy, police had acquired the requisite CI skills and also made supreme sacrifices, they still lacked to a considerable extent the military-style precision, the ADGP felt.But they are definitely ahead of security forces in terms of gathering intelligence due to the reason that they are a local force and have a wide network of local contacts. To dry up this intelligence network, militants, however, have been targetting their local contacts from time to time, branding them as informers.
"We are being attacked because the force has become active in CI operations," remarked the officer.It was true that police role had increased in anti-insurgency operations, but it was also true that they lacked military-like training, he added.
He said police were mostly "under-motivated" and "under-equipped" in comparison to army. "To shape J&K police as the best CI force in the country, a military-like atmosphere needs to be developed in the police organisation," he asserted.Though some new CI courses had been introduced at the police training academy, Udhampur, to make police a formidable CI force, a lot more needed to be done in this regard, the officer said.
The past record of police also showed that cops were under-motivated and felt insecure when confronted with ambushes and sudden attacks on their posts. Few years back, heavily-armed militants had looted arms and ammunition from a police station in Mahore area. While no ultra was killed, cops had suffered casualities in the assault. Those, who survived militants' bullets, had hidden themselves under cots and behind whatever could provide them a cover.During the same time, cops, returning from an encounter site, were ambushed and shot dead in Rajouri. At Tumber Khoo near Mishriwala here, police had preferred to stay away from the firing range of the five Pak-militants who were later killed by army in a surgical operation.After the killing of militants, while army was still in the process of winding up the operation, an Inspector (now DSP) had "angrily" kicked a militant's body as a result of which an unexploded grenade lying beneath it had exploded.Few cops and a DIG had sustained splinter injuries in the blast. Instead of getting a reprimand, the Inspector was later rewarded with a "prize" posting. He had got a pat on the back obviously for kicking the dead militant and unnecessarily putting lives of police officers in danger.Despite such follies of select cops, police had handled with a great efficiency some CI operations without any army support and killed militants too. In Doda, Reasi, Kishtwar, Rajouri and Poonch districts, cops have killed several militants.
Also most of the surrenders by militants have taken place due to their commendable efforts and local contacts.But police also need to weed out the moles in the organisation and civil administrative set up and book them under the law of the land.Had the driver of a former minister (now no more) not given shelter to Pak militant Irfan, the January 26, 1995, serial blasts at M A Stadium here could have been averted.
The whole information about Irfan and his vast network of contacts stands scripted in a police document.As per the document, Irfan earlier smuggled narcotics for a notorious Akhnoor-based family. |
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