Mistaken as terrorists!

Mahabir Jaglan

CHILLY breeze in winter, descending the slope of the Tawi valley, cools the Jammu town occasionally to freezing point. It was a typical frosty morning in January 1991, when I, along with four students of Jammu University, boarded a bus for RS Pura, a border town. We were on a mission to conduct a survey on Gurjars, settled along roads with their herd of buffaloes during winter and migrated to green meadows in Kashmir Himalayas during summer. The survey was part of a research project sponsored by the state forest department, and was aimed at determining the routes traversed by Gurjars following transhumance practice. Fresh after submitting my PhD thesis at the JNU, I was entrusted with the task of handling this research project by my supervisor. I had roped in four postgraduate students to accomplish the survey. 

We got down at RS Pura and hired a tonga to get to Gurjar deras. We traversed barely 4 km, beyond which we walked to locate the deras along approach roads, where we split into two groups to gather information in the questionnaire. 

Three hours were lost in our work and we didn’t realise that we reached very close to the Pakistan border. Suddenly, an Army truck carrying about 10 jawans stopped near the dera, where one of our groups was interacting with the family head and I was doing some file-work sitting in the sun. Two jawans jumped out of the truck and asked the family head if he had seen five people around. His reply was in the negative. They reported it to their JCO sitting in the truck’s cabin. Then they came to me to ask the same question and I said no, thinking they were looking for their fellow jawans. After completing our job at that site, we planned to cover Gurjar deras on the eastern side of RS Pura and walked back to the place where we left the tonga. 

We had almost reached our destination, when the truck came from behind and blocked our way. In a swift action, we were surrounded by armed jawans who searched us. The JCO was furious for not telling them about the five men. I pleaded with them that I did not know they were searching for us. We were ordered to board the truck and the tongawala was also bundled in by the jawans. We were now headed back toward the border. I asked them why they had apprehended us. They said in the morning after dropping us, the tongawala reported to the nearby Army post that five suspected terrorists were headed toward the border!

We were taken to the Army barracks close to the border and presented in front of the CO. I showed the Major an introduction letter and identity card issued to me by the JNU. After satisfying himself that we were innocent, he offered us tea and was kind enough to arrange for us to be dropped at RS Pura. I wonder if it happened in the present time, my affiliation with the JNU would have easily earned me a deshdrohi tag.