CHANDIGARH: Militant activity in north-western states has declined in the last few months, although, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency of Pakistan remains active in the region, according to an assessment by the police chiefs of these states.

Briefing media persons after a conference of the police chiefs, here, on March 27, the Punjab Director General of Police, K.P.S.Gill, said the incidence of violence in Jammu and Kashmir had also come down since the last conference, which was held in Gujarat in November.

People in Jammu and Kashmir were getting disillusioned with violence. and the security agencies were in control of the situation. “Jammu and Kashmir will go the Punjab way,” Gill said, but refused to make any “prediction” about when it would happen.

The conference was attended by the police chiefs and senior officers from Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and representatives of the BSF and the CRPF. It was decided to invite Maharashtra also for the next conference.

The conference discussed militancy and its ramifications in the region. The police chiefs also exchanged in- formation and intelligence inputs collected by interrogating arrested militants and other sources. There was a consensus that the “security agencies were well on the top.”

Gill said the ISI was still running training camps for militants who had migrated illegally from USA, UK and some other countries. Recently, the Punjab police had caught a militant at Patiala who had been trained in the use of explosives by ISI.

The Punjab Police chief ruled out the revival of militancy in the state. The militant groups would make at- tempts to continue their activity, but the police was “on their toes.” The kidnapping of Rajendra Mirdha was such an attempt at the behest of the ISI.

The safe rescue of Mirdha and the killing of Navneet Singh Qadian had “nipped the attempt in the bud,” Gill said, adding that the kidnapping was the handiwork of the Khalistan Liberation Force whose top leaders were still in Pakistan.

Asked about the inquiry into the “disappearance” of the Congress leader, N.D. Tiwari, which had been. entrusted to him, Gill said the Union. Minister of State for Home, Rajesh Pilot, had spoken to him about it, but he had yet to receive any government

order. JAMMU: The Jammu and Kashmir state will have a separate Human Rights Commission. The state Governor General, K.V. Krishan Rao (retd), gave this announcement at the inaugural ceremony of the two-day national seminar on Human Rights. Global Problems and Perspective, at Jammu University.

The seminar was inaugurated by the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Justice. Ranganathan Misra, and attended by all members of NHRC and 60 delegates from 21 Universities. The governor, who dwelt on various facts of the human rights issue, root causes of terrorism and its fall out, said that the Pak-sponsored proxy war is essentially responsible for what- ever human rights violations that had taken place in Jammu and Kashmir. They also ruined the career of thou- sands of youth by disrupting the educational system and imposing an alien gun culture on them.

The governor said that new units of security forces in Kashmir were being properly briefed and trained not to resort to pointless excessive use of force at the time of their induction. People must also realize that when there are thousands of security forces personnel deployed and working in very trying circumstances, the likely hood of occurrence of some odd violation of human rights due to the in- discipline, could not be ruled out. But in such cases as and when brought to notice severe action was taken, he added.

Article extracted from this publication >> March 31, 1995