The crisis started with the killing of a teenager Tufail Matoo by the police when he was returning home. Since then, 111 people, mostly youth, lay dead while an estimated 2600 civilians are injured. Even jails and police lock-ups are full.
Actions, as they say, speak louder than words. Had the police acted swiftly in cases of broad day light murders that its personnel resorted to, instead of cooking up theories to hoodwink the public opinion, his acknowledgement of mistakes would have been a respectable statement. But that never was the case.
There were many cases in which timely action could have saved the situation and, of course, lives. From the murder of Tufail Mattoo in Srinagar, to the brutal massacre of youth inside a house in Laizbal Islamabad, or Palhalan Pattan, no action was initiated in time. The FIR in Matoo case was registered only after court intervention.
Instead of doing justice to people in Palhalan, they were besieged indoors for a month. Yet the top cop tries to seek answers from the people!
One of Kashmir’s tragedies is that accused have the mandate to judge their actions. While the theory of natural justice recognizes systems of justice delivery as independent and separate from the law enforcement agencies, in Kashmir, the two are inextricably inseparable.
Police is the sole agency mandated by law to investigate the crimes irrespective of whether the accused is a civilian or a cop. This advantage often comes handy to the police. That perhaps explains, why when the lawmakers asked police about the number of injured it gave a list of some 500 people. And to the same question, the health department furnished a list of more than 1600 its hospitals treated. No eyebrows raised, no questions asked!
This has set a trend.
Recently the top officers of the armed forces stated that they have around 1500 FIRs registered against them in last 20 years. It supplemented by declaring that 97 percent of the cases were false.
Unarguably, in Kashmir everybody seems busy in jumping from being an accused to a judge! Otherwise, it is a well known fact that in all the high profile cases against them, the armed forces have refused cooperation point blank – at any stage.
If the security grid, that actually runs Kashmir, has to make efforts to rebuild its image, it better go for self-introspection.
