‘Kashmir police, not CRPF, should confront stone-pelting mobs’

After months of seeming normalcy, Kashmir is simmering again. Eleven civilians, including eight teenagers, were killed in clashes with the CRPF over the past fortnight, prompting the state chief minister Omar Abdullah to term the CRPF a “force gone out of control”. The latest surge in violence has once again brought the spotlight on two issues: the continued imposition of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in the Valley, and the use of the CRPF for mob control. EN Rammohan, who was recently in the news as head of the committee investigating the Maoist killing of 76 CRPF jawans in Dantewada, served as Inspector General (IG), Border Security Force (BSF) in Kashmir at the height of the insurgency in 1993-95. In an exclusive interview, he tells DNA why the Kashmir state government has got it all wrong when it comes to dealing with agitating mobs.

Till last fortnight, there hadn’t been as much violence in Kashmir as, say, 15 years ago. So why not revoke the AFSPA in Kashmir?
The level of violence is not the point here. The AFSPA is meant for deployment of the army and paramilitary forces in a ‘disturbed area’ to combat insurgency. So far it has been notified only in areas where there has been an insurgency problem. Now the reason we need the AFSPA is this: normally it is only the police who have the powers under the CrPC to arrest anybody, and to, on suspicion, search a house without a warrant. Let’s say, a sub-inspector is told by a source that a certain house has an armed person who has come from across the border. Now the sub-inspector can search the house straight away without getting a warrant. But the army or paramilitary deployed in that area, in a similar situation, cannot search the house because they have no powers to do so under the CrPC. If you have the AFSPA notified in that area, then it gives them powers to search the house without a police officer, arrest anyone, and fire in self-defence.

But this Act also authorises the army to fire on civilians, doesn’t it?
No, it only authorises them to fire if somebody attacks them. Suppose a person is attacking CRPF jawans with stones, they can fire on the attackers in self-defence.

But isn’t lathi charge the correct response to stone-pelting mobs? Firing is the last resort.
The problem in Kashmir is that the state police is asking the CRPF to help. If there is a mob throwing stones, why do they need the CRPF? There are so many armed battalions of the Kashmir police. They are trained in lathi charges. Yet you don’t see the Kashmir police doing the lathi charge.

So what’s stopping the Kashmir government from getting their own police to do the lathi charge? Is it that by getting the CRPF to do it, they can deflect all blame on to the Centre?
Please pose that question to the DG of the state police.

What should be the CRPF’s job in Kashmir?
Guard important buildings, installations,  police stations. If somebody attacks the police station, they can fire back.

Coming back to the AFSPA, do we really need it in Kashmir?
When you are deploying the army in the border areas, where are the police stations there? When there are a group of men coming across the border with machine guns, what does the army do? They have to fire at them. Without the AFSPA, the army won’t have the power to do so.

Forget the border areas. What about the urban centres in Kashmir?
Yes, there are towns in Kashmir which are far away from the border. But militants can and do come there and occupy Kashmiri houses. And when a police or army patrol passes by, they fire at them. What can the army do? They have to fire back, and they need powers for that.

On what basis can we ever say that, fine, now we no longer need the AFSPA in Kashmir?
Only when Pakistan stops people from infiltrating into Kashmir, and the Kashmiri militants give up their arms.

According to the UN, the AFSPA violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which India is a signatory. Isn’t that reason enough to repeal this Act?
Look, there is nothing wrong with the AFSPA. What is wrong is when a force commits excesses, fires on innocent people, and no action is taken by the commanders of that force. I know a number of cases where a force on patrol is ambushed. Say, three jawans are killed. Now the force looks around for three people — it could be farmers working in the nearby field — rounds them up and shoots them. This is plain, cold-blooded murder. But often the force commanders don’t take action against perpetrators of such crimes. The militants who fired at them escaped, and you round up four or five civilians and shoot them — is this the way to conduct operations? The AFSPA has earned a bad name due to bad leadership within the forces.

Suppose we repeal the AFSPA in Kashmir , what will happen?
It’s simple: the army won’t be able to operate anywhere in the areas, where there are no police stations nearby.