NEW DELHI: Ever since the Prime Minister made it clear that the new Minister for Internal Security, Rajesh Pilot, would be in Charge of Kashmir, some officials in Jammu, have been expecting Sweeping changes in policies and the identification of the personnel who would implement them. But that does not mean that they like the changes or are prepared 10 cooperate wholeheartedly in effecting them.
That a manner that has become disturbingly familiar some officials have not hesitated to air their Opposition in the press, while maintaining their cloaks of anonymity, A case in point is the allegation that appeared in a Delhi newspaper, that Pilot was pushing for the rehabilitation of an officer against whom the IB had established a prime facie case for leaking information about a secret operation, Pilot is reported to be intent on bringing him in to replace the present head of the BSP in Kashmir, Ashok Patel..
The facts of the case are, however, Very different, The officer concerned in D.D. Gupta, formerly the Inspector General of the CRPF posted in Kashmir, Gupta started his tour of duty with the conventional idea that militancy was confined to disaffected youth armed and incited by Pakistan and would disappear when this was brought under control with a firm hand. However, during interrogations of captured militants he gradually came to the conclusion that this approach was the wrong one, that a dialogue had to be started and a political accommodation sought. His views did not find favor with the powers in Srinagar and Delhi, and he was transferred out of the Valley. However, the Central Government which has been trying, ever since the first contacts were made by George Fernandes, to keep a parallel political track open, decided to use Gupta’s services for the purpose, because his views had become known and he had established a measure of trust among the militants.
Gupta thus kept visiting Srinagar regularly, but this was looked down upon by those who believed that a firm handling and wielding the big stick were the answers in Kashmir, as they had eventually turned out to be in Punjab. The fact of Gupta’s visits to Srinagar was therefore leaked to the local press, but with two diabolical twists, the names of those whom ‘Gupta was visiting were also leaked, and the word was spread along the grapevine that he him Self had leaked the story and the names of his contact. The Valley therefore get the message that Gupta had been an agent provocateur all along, whose mission had been to “compromise” militant leaders, Eventually Gupta’s usefulness came to an abrupt end, and he was transferred to Patna.
This is not the only, or by any means the most serious, instance of a calculated sabotage of government policies, By far, the most Serious one was the disregard for the Central Government’s instructions that led to the killing of Abdul Hamid Sheikh, President of the JKLF, and eight others Virtually the entire military leadership of the JKLF on November 21 last year.
A couple for the security forces? Not quite, for Hamid Shaikh, who had been in jail in Delhi for many months had gradually come to the conclusion that Pakistan would not tolerate an independent Kashmir and had shown this in its sponsorship of the Hizbul Mujahideen, and the treatment meted out to Amanullah Khan. He had also concluded that the Indian Army could not be defeated on the ground, He had, therefore, been released by the government to rally support in the JKLF for starting a political dialogue with New Delhi.
Within weeks of Harold Shaikh’s arrival in Srinagar, Delhi began to notice a disturbing pattern. Surprise police raids, locally known as crackdowns, were taking place wherever Shaikh was meeting other JKLF leaders, After Shaikh escaped two such crackdowns, by narrow margins, he began to lose faith in Delhi’s desire of capacity to bring Srinagar around to a dialogue with the militants. Delhi again urged Srinagar to make sure that no raids were targeted at Shaikh. The Kashmir Government promised it would not let this happen, but on November 21, the BSF carried out yet another raid, and this time it was successful.
Subsequent inquiries revealed that Al Jihad, the hardest line pro Pakistan outfit in Valley, had succeeded in planting an informer in the JKLF who kept feeding a high level contact in the BSF, advance information about Shaikh’s movements. Either because the Governor’s office could not control the BSF, especially at lower levels, or because it did not want to, the temptation to collect a few more scalps proved too hard to resist.
Yet another event was the murder of H.N. Wanchoo, the veteran trade union leader and human rights activists on December 5. Wanchoo had campaigned incessantly for an end to custodial killings and for accountability in the security forces, He had moved the J&K high court repeatedly asking it to issue writs to the government requiring it to inform the court of the whereabouts of those who were missing or had been arrested, of those who had become victims of the actions of the security forces. His meticulous documentation had become the most damning indictment of the government’s human rights record in the State. In the three weeks before he was killed, Wanchoo had met a lady from Asia watch who had entered Kashmir surreptitiously.
So when he was taken from his house by two unidentified youth in an auto rickshaw and shot at point blank range, the entire Valley concluded that the J&K government had had it done by militants whom it had succeeded in “turning.” All the militant organizations condemned the killing, and held meetings of condolence, it is possible to build other scenarios that explain why and by whom he was killed, but in Kashmir what is believed is true.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 26, 1993
