There is a general couldn’t care less outlook that has come to define New Delhi’s attitude to Jammu and Kashmir. Whenever this manifests itself it is obvious to the rest of the country that the new normal is not normal.
Take the ambush in which four soldiers and an army driver were killed in an ambush five days ago on December 21, in Surankote area of Poonch. The soldiers were from the 48 RR, a formation which is not new to the area. Surankote is known to be a hostile pocket. Which means it is an area where every now and then a patrol gets hit.
In this ambush it is not yet clear whether the standard protocol of road clearing was adhered to or not but it has emerged that two vehicles, a jeep and truck, were going to an area of operation when they were waylaid. Whenever this happens, the shorthand to understand it is that the other guys have been watching you more carefully than you thought and then when you slip up you get banged. Intelligence failure may not cover it entirely, when as many as five of your uniformed men die, and as many get wounded in this manner. The only evidence the perpetrators leave behind are AK and pistol type bullets, grotesque mutilations on the bodies of the soldiers and, of course, they showed clean pairs of heels, underlining the adage that he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. The forested hills, which offer great manoeuvrability, are obviously a winter wonderland for our visiting terrorists who, at leisure and with temerity, seem to pick uniformed targets on mission-mode, which implies they are already on a state of high alert.
Enraged at the sitting-duck type of deaths of their brothers in arms, the 48 RR, probably led by a Major or a Captain, thinking that villagers in the area have somehow enabled this attack, pick nine men and beat them within an inch of their lives, pull down their shalwars, tear open chilli powder packets and pour their contents on their wounds and in their posteriors. At the end of it, three die and the rest land in hospital. While it is not clear whether chilli powder is part of SOP in cordon and search and other operations of our RR units, not being dead, the injured will tell the tale in such lurid detail and so often that Kashmir's youngsters will soon be repeating it even in their sleep. And, yes, your guess is probably right: those who died were hastily buried without a perfunctory post mortem.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Clearly the army is not able to control the new narrative, now slightly worse for the wear, that everything is normal in Jammu and Kashmir. An FIR has been registered and the army will conduct an investigation. Since Delhi controls Jammu and Kashmir directly, via Manoj Sinha, the governor whose favourite bedtime fairy tale is how normal Jammu and Kashmir is, someone somehow will be found guilty. Not the Brigadier who commands the 48 RR, though.
Take the Shopian encounter of 2019, which underlines that Manoj Sinha is no stranger to rogue operations occurring under his sensitive nose. In July 2020 three labourers -- Imtiyaz Ahmed, Abrar Ahmed and Mohammed Ibrar -- who had gone to find work in the orchards in Shopian were murdered in a far flung Amshipora village and their deaths dressed up as an encounter. Brigadier Ajay Katoch, who preened on television about what a good and efficient encounter it had been with impeccable human intelligence, got a Yudh Seva Medal. When the families of the three labourers, which included a minor, lodged missing person complaints and an outcry followed, an FIR was lodged, as part of Standard Operating Procedure, but the controversy refused to die. This was in early glory days of the abrogation of Article 370. Then the army ordered a Court of Inquiry and found a Captain of 62 RR guilty and gave him life sentence and he was dismissed from service. An Armed Forces Tribunal took up the case but found evidence to be insufficient and Captain Bhoopindar Singh got bail and walked out of jail, three years later in November 2023, which is last month. What do you think will happen now?
Before it becomes a similar crisis, things will move quickly, as seems to be happening. In this case too, a court of inquiry has been ordered. They will similarly discover a few bad apples in the ranks of the RR. As the Shopian example shows the evidentiary and investigative aspects of military courts of inquiry leaves much to be desired. A buddy-buddy system probably prevails where outcomes are unsurprising. The result of the court of enquiry of cannot be kept under wraps the same way as the report of enquiry into the Pulwama massacre of February 14, 2019, for instance, where some three dozen CRPF personnel perished. In any case, it will have to be done before the next ambush happens, which could be about any day now. The Brigadier who commands the 48 RR will be transferred out, if that hasn't happened already. Chilli powder may be discontinued temporarily as part of standard issue to 48 RR.
Our muscular policy may have reduced strikes and stone pelting but the Kashmiri no longer wants to die cheap and terrorism which comes from across is not stopping. Old militant outfits with new names will continue. The question to really ask is, if everything is really normal, what is the army doing out there?
