NEW DELHI: Two former police officers have cautioned that the Army should not be deployed for internal security duties very frequently or for long periods.
J.F Ribeiro, former police chief of Bombay and Punjab and currently India’s Ambassador to Romania, is of the opinion that deployment of the Army for maintaining law and order adversely affects its training and battle preparedness and its relations with the people and the civilian authorities.
Writing in the latest issue of Indian Defense Review, Ribeiro recalls how the army lost the people’s trust in Ahmedabad where it was deployed for a long time. There is another danger, if the army is deployed frequently for civilian duties; the civilian authority suffers in terms of its survival. Also, while dealing with terrorism as in Punjab during Ribeiro’s stint there, the army is faced with a now in situation because it is trained to fight an enemy and not its own countrymen.
Ribeiro suggests that policemen who alienate the people by troubling them must be checked with an iron hand. “If the police is seen in the same light as a terrorist in the eyes of the villagers, the baule against terrorists as good as lost.”
As for the deployment of the Army for internal security duties, Marwah says it is not in the interest of the country or of the Army. He said the central police forces, too, have serious problems when deployed in the states for dealing with the law and order situations.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 12, 1993
