For the last two decades, J&K’s security grid raised an almost 29000-member army of VDCs across the Jammu region by training and arming selective sections of the population. Kashmir Life analyses the evolution of the extra-constitutional set-up that is in sharp focus at a time when these gunmen have started getting consumed by the culture they gave their life to.
Milestones that help us better understand Kashmir’s contemporary history start with the BJP’s Ekta Yatra of 1990. As militants started massacring Hindus in Chenab Valley, it triggered Lal K Advani’s `save Doda yatra’ to Jammu in 1994 summer. More than 14000 right-wing activists courted arrest (Advani included) to force the gubernatorial regime to declare the mountainous region disturbed.
The argument was that once the area is declared disturbed, the army will take over. There will be special laws in operation, and a counter-pressure on insurgents will help the Hindu minority evade attacks. By then, the entire Kashmir Valley and the twin Pir Panchal districts of Poonch and Rajouri were the disturbed areas, leaving only Ladakh and four Jammu districts as normal.
The Narasimha Rao government in Delhi was opposed to accepting the BJP’s demand, which could have helped the party in the elections. So they settled for something else, and it was the VDC – the village defence committee. As for disturbed area act, it was implemented by Advani, when he presided over a North Block meeting on August 8, 200,1 as Home Minister.
The frightening Kalashinkove rattling emerged on Srinagar streets in late 1988. Doda’s Gool belt was the first Jammu area that followed suit, somewhere in 1993. Only later, the twin districts of Rajouri and Poonch, with dangerous proximity to the LoC, emerged on the insurgent map. But the four Jammu districts, including the Chenab Valley and the main Dogra heartland, created the worst of the headlines for many years as insurgents would intercept Hindu civilians, line them up and kill them – some while accompanying the just-married couples, many in their sleep.
The first massacre of 14 Hindus on Sarthal Road near Kishtwar on August 14, 1993, triggered a serious crisis. Within days, a section of Hindus started migrating to Jammu. As the state government was busy managing the Kashmiri Pandits who left Kashmir in 1990, the possible repetition in Chenab Valley could have triggered a larger crisis. So everybody in the government was desperate to ensure that the trickle fleeing to the plains from the mountains must stop.
One way of tackling the region was to bring the Chenab Valley into the ambit of the disturbed area, a campaign that the BJP launched. The government did not accept it. In a clear quid pro quo, the gubernatorial regime settled on the idea of helping the threatened population to have their own defences. The promise marked the conclusion of the BJP campaign, even as the Village Defence Committee (VDC) was introduced a year later.
The state government, then remotely managed by New Delhi, evolved the Village Defence Group Scheme under a state home ministry order (Home-293 of 1995) on September 30. Justifying setting up of VDCs to manage the active participation of the local population in the security of the respective villages, and vital installations, the order said its members volunteering for the initiative will be provided arms and ammunition. Initially, 660 such groups were created in the Jammu region, and most of the members were Hindus. Officially, it was stated that Muslims were reluctant to be part of the initiative.
But the process of creating an extra-constitutional set-up had started much earlier. It was early 1993 when the state police reappointed 200 ex-servicemen in Poonch and Rajouri as special police officials (SPOs). None of them was a Muslim, and they were all deployed near the LoC. Soon after, around 500 such appointments were made in Chenab Valley, mostly in Doda. Their efficiency as fighters was questionable to the extent that the then state police chief, MN Saberwal, in 1994 summer restructured the set-up and deployed them for intelligence gathering. Reappointment of these former soldiers had created such a serious security situation for their families that they had started migrating to Himachal.
Contrary to a general belief that attacks on Hindus were contained by VDCs, the fact is that the attacks increased manifold after the VDCs were set up. The second major massacre took place on January 5, 1996, at Barshalla in Kishtwar when 15 Hindus, ten from a single family, were killed. Though the motive were economical, it was a battle over bovine trade in Thathri, and militants carried out the massacre. The massacre at Kalmadi (June 8, 1996) and Sarwadhar (July 25, 1996) in Doda, Mahore (April 19, 1998) in Udhampur, took place after the VDCs were set up and were functioning.
In fact, some events in Chenab Valley’s history are attributed to the VDCs. The worst massacre of Chapnari (June 19, 1998) in Doda is one such instance in which militants attacked a marriage party and killed 26 persons. The slain included three brothers, two of whom were bridegrooms.
Locals believed it to be retaliation for a March 17, 1998, incident that involved some Muslims (of Kothi Pain village) witnessing a VDC member, Suresh Kumar (of Pamassa village in Thathri) and his friend, molesting a Gujjar lady. While his accomplice fled, Suresh was caught and beaten to a pulp. While he was shifted to the hospital, news of his killing (he died the next afternoon) spread like wildfire. It triggered communal tensions in the region during which four persons of Karara (two brothers Abdul Gani Malik and Gulam Hassan Malik, Gulam Mustafa and Abdul Qayoum) were allegedly beaten to death and thrown into the Chenab. Their bodies were fished out after four days, over 150 Kms away.
Under intense pressure from New Delhi, police arrested a young boy and accused him of being the mastermind of the massacre. During the trial, he was set free honourably by the court, with severe strictures being passed against the prosecution.
Even the migration peaked after the VDCs started functioning. By the summer of 1998, the migrant families from Doda living in Jammu had crossed 1100, and it was going on.
In October 2006, there was a crisis in the making at the border of Bhaderwah and Chamba (Himachal). Then, a group of 64 villagers from Sawara in the Gundoh belt – the home belt of former Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, crossed the unmanned inter-state mountain border and started living as migrants in Nodhal Dhar. Comprising 30-children, 14 women, and two men, the government at Shimla started treating them as migrants.
It took two days for the administration in Doda to understand that the ‘migrants’ are actually the families of five VDC members who were disarmed by the police for a cold-blooded murder. In order to save their skin, they chose to flee. The five VDC men and an SPO who was part of the escort of a local BJP leader killed Farooq Ahmad without any reason. As the investigations zeroed in on VDC men, the local BJP leaders, according to officials who investigated the brutal murder, hatched the plan of sending the families to Himachal, creating a new crisis and diverting attention.
At the same time, however, some of the VDCs did fight to the level they were trained and required. In one incident somewhere in Dacchan, a group of eight VDC men continued exchanging fire with militants for the whole night till they all were all neutralised.
Many individuals got publicity for being inspirational to VDCs. These included a Gujjar girl, Jameela of Duga village, who was credited with killing a top militant.
Given the limitations of training, sometimes a week, and weapon management, by and large, they initially got a vintage 3.3 rifle; these VDCs were never a fighting force. At one point of time, when the state lacked enough of numbers to deploy in a vast region, the creation of VDCs was a visible force multiplier. Bounded by the Pir Panchal range on the north and Seoj Dhar on the south, the erstwhile Doda borders Islamabad in Kashmir in the north and Udhampur and Kuthua of the Jammu region in the south-west. It has contiguous borders with Chamba of Himachal and Kargil of the Ladakh region as well. A maze of crisscross ridges, thick forests, dense vegetation, Chenab Valley lives beyond the Chenab banks.
As the security forces were deployed in the region, the role of the VDCs and SPOs was reduced to that of watchmen. It was at a much later stage that they were asked to collect hard intelligence in mountainous plains and green meadows.
By the time the VDCs started becoming news, it was an ‘army’. Of around 28865 volunteers that the state government has armed and deployed across the Jammu region, a local NGO recently said 12709 are in the Chenab Valley, and more than 95% of them are Hindus. Every VDC has one special police official (SPO) attached, who is paid by the police every month but is not an employee of the organisation. So far, 131 VDC members were mowed down, and 55 were injured across the state.
After initial vintage 3.3 rifles, the security agencies armed them with SLRs and even AK-47 rifles. Since VDC members are not formally paid, they are entitled to keep an assault rifle as their trophy in case they can kill a militant – a situation that was rarely reported. Against an initial one-time allotment of five live bullets, they now get more than 50 at a time.
But arming a section of the population by the state government has triggered a massive demand for arms in the region. In the last two years, officials in the state home ministry told newsmen recently, the state government issued 51622 gun licenses, of which 31006 went to the Chenab Valley.
With militancy at its lowest, VDCs are emerging as a societal liability. “Only some VDCs have fought against militants,” a police officer who is serving in the Chenab valley said. “They lack the capacity to fight militants. They work like watchmen and definitely are a deterrent.”
As there are not many militants around, the VDCs are busying themselves in a host of activities which will clearly trigger a reaction. A vast section of the VDCs is seen as an extension of the right-wing parties. BJP’s emphasis on strengthening VDCs in the region has cast a shadow on the impartiality of this extra-constitutional setup that policy makers within the police were desperate to legalise using the controversial police bill.
VDCs are increasingly being accused of emerging as a tool of annoyance to others who lack access to weapons and authority. In the run-up to the Kishtwar communal clashes, there were at least two instances that are being counted as contributors to the crisis: a gang rape by some VDC-supported goons and the murder of a young boy, being attributed to VDC men, though there is no proof.
This has created a situation where the VDC men pull the trigger within their homes. There are scores of such instances being reported religiously by the media in Jammu. Some of the most recent are here.
An insane Yash Pal committed suicide in his ancestral Dalori village in Rajouri using his official weapon of his brother Ram Singh’s official weapon on May 20, 2013. A VDC member, Singh, had died six months back, but the police did not collect the 3.3 rifle, allotted to him.
On June 12, 2013, Bansi Lal used his official rifle to kill himself in Gunda village of Rajouri. Abdul Hamid did the same thing on April 17 in Samdhu Magra in Reasi. Kewal Krishan, another VDC man in Panchari Udhampur, used the official weapon to kill his brother’s wife before committing suicide.
It has been happening for all these years. On November 5, 2012, an inebriated VDC man, Vipan Sharma, facing serious conjugal problems, committed suicide in his Bhandera village in Kishtwar. Kuldeep Singh of Kha No 1 village in Rajouri did the same thing on Nov 11, 2011. On May 6, 2011, Inder Singh of Choudhary Narh used his official rifle to kill his son Vishal after the latter objected to his perpetual inebriation. With the son dead and father in jail, this family in Rajouri is destitute. In a worst incident that took place on February 6, 2008, VDC man Sanjeev Gupta of Billawar in Kathua killed his minor son and wife before committing suicide. The entire family was annihilated.
Some of these VDC men were attracted to the gun culture by the revenge factor, as they were victimised by the insurgents. A few benefits while serving the VDC as they get adjusted in the police formally on operational grounds. Various security agencies have had enough of free publicity by granting access to news media and do exceptionally great stories, especially the women being trained by soldiers and herdswomen chasing the herds with AK-47 in hand!
But empowering people without adequate training and responsibility, and making it a selective affair, is contributing to a larger crisis. That is perhaps why people in Kashmir and most of the population in Chenab Valley are seeking the disbanding of the culture. A lawmaker has already gone to the court with a PIL.
