Kashmir: Is Anyone Accountable?

NEW DELHI: At the end of 17 days of curfew and violence, no one seems to be accountable for the deaths and serious, crippling injuries to the protesters during the current agitation in Kashmir.

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has said she knows nothing, why and how Hizb commander Burhan Wani was killed, and what happened subsequently. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has spent two days in the Valley to strike an “emotional bond” with the Kashmiris, has asked the stone pelters to stop agitating, has directed the forces to exercise restraint, and blaming Pakistan has told it to keep its nose out of the Valley.

Meanwhile, 170 young people are struggling to live and to see after serious injuries from ‘pellet guns’ fired indiscriminately and directly into their faces by the forces. The effort is clearly to cover this up with the Opposition parties rather satisfied with their individual speeches in Parliament, leaving the ‘healing touch’ to those who seem to have lost the legitimacy to heal after this current phase of violence in Kashmir.

In an environment where everyone is passing the buck, as fast as it stops before them, the Central Reserve Police Force Director General K.Durga Prasad can be excused for doing the same. In fact, he made two rather important points at a press briefing in Delhi that need mention, in context.

One, that while he was so sorry about the eye pellet injuries that had blinded Kashmiri youth his force would continue using these guns. This is a clear indication that there is no re-think on what was a deliberate use of these weapons and while Prasad went on to say that the forces are ‘trained’ to shoot below the waist, he did not attempt an explanation as to then why most of the injuries were above the waist and straight into the eyes.

He further said that the forces personnel had been instructed to shoot below the waist, thereby admitting that what passes for standard operating procedure was not followed by the men who incidentally have also been urged not to be “too emotional” while on the job in Kashmir.

The government has expressed similar regret for the use of pellet guns, the Opposition has waxed eloquent on the issue as well, but significantly not a single political leader has asked for accountability to be fixed for firing above the waist, and directly into the faces and eyes of the protesters in Kashmir. There has been no mention of other crowd control methods and the dismal failure of the forces to follow standard operating procedures, that can make all the difference between death and injury, and between crippling injury and treatable wounds.

Two, in what amounted to a sensational disclosure by any standards, the DG admitted that his manpower resources were so stretched that CrPF personnel were being pulled out of training to be posted in a sensitive state like Jammu and Kashmir. In a sense he provided the answer to the question: why were most of the injuries above the waist, with the guns being fired straight into the faces, skulls and eyes of the youth.

The DG, referring to the ‘stress’ said as many as 114 companies (about 11,400 personnel), which were undergoing training elsewhere, had to be pulled out and deployed in the state to control the situation arising after Wani's death. "Our annual training has suffered as we are in continuous deployment. As of today, all our training companies are deployed in some theatre or the other," he said.

The stress that makes the men posted in the Valley trigger happy is a fact well known to the residents, with articles being written in past years about the long hours of duty and the ‘over reaction’ that the forces deployed in Kashmir often indulge in. This has often aggravated the situation, as in 2010 when 126 boys were killed in incidents over a few months, and now when the pellet guns were used indiscriminately on stone pelters many of them have been crippled for life.

Journalists visiting the Valley at crisis points have found the paramilitary jawans over tired, sullen and angry after long hours of duty. Trained to look on the local population as the ‘enemy’ they become trigger happy, shooting without thought. Several paramilitary men at checkpoints told this writer earlier, of the long unbroken hours of duty, of sleepless nights, all resulting in often panicky responses. One of them who had shouted at the driver of our car who was a Kashmiri and calmed down when he saw the ‘outsiders’ in the car said that he was exhausted, like all the others with him, and had no idea when he would be relieved at the checkpost.

Others at the checkpoints during curfew admitted to being on their feet for 18 hours at a time, with the anger then directed at those who challenge them in any way. The stress thus,is lethal for civilians, and in this case youth of whom currently 170 are being treated for severe eye injuries caused by the ‘pellet guns’ a misnomer for lethal weapons being used by the CrpF in Kashmir.

Doctors in Kashmir have declared several young people injured by pellet guns blind, and are currently working on surgical procedures to save the sight of 170 admitted in hospitals in the Valley. Sources said that the second stage of repair surgically has started in most of the cases, maintaining that many will have to undergo several surgeries before there is a prognosis. That the young people going through the current agony will be able to see at all, is still a moot question that the doctors will not be able to answer until the long, complicated medical procedure is completed.

As the medical sources said, the retina is the least resistant of all tissues in the human body and the damage done to most of the young people might be irreversible. The pellets, that hit like a deadly spray, are lodged in the skull, faces, eyes of the ‘above the waist’ injuries that the majority of patients have sustained. Clearly the lack of training that the DG admitted to, is evident in the complete violation of the standard operating procedure, culminating in a straight ‘to the face’ firing on the young protesters including little children below 10 years.

Of course much of the hyped reaction of the paramilitary and police men on the ground is derived from what loosely passes for political will. Considerable restraint was brought in after a political decision to bring down the temperatures in Kashmir a few years ago, with even Army Commanders moving into a ‘hearts and minds’ initiative, away from the ‘shoot at sight’ approach that had characterised the relations between the forces and the civilians for several years before and after the so called ‘decade of militancy’ in the state. The directives had brought about a shift in behaviour, with Kashmiris too responding well to the Army overtures until policy changed again, as now, with guns becoming the substitute for dialogue.