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Regulating acid sale
Right to relief |
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Nobbs did his part
Psychological warfare
Romance of rain
Time running out for ‘71 POWs
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Regulating acid sale
Finally, the Supreme Court had to intervene to jolt the Centre and the state governments from their slumber. In the wake of rising number of acid attacks on young women, the court on Tuesday cautioned the government that, if things did not move within a week, it would be forced to ban the retail sale of acid in the country. In the gender-specific crime of acid attack, often the spurned lovers throw sulphuric/nitric/hydrochloric acid, available for as low a price as Rs 30 a bottle, on young women, distorting, or at times eliminating, facial features, causing blindness and damaging the skin. These crimes force victims into life-long health problems, social isolation and indebtedness caused by the high cost of medical treatment. The Supreme Court's insistence on banning the retail sale of acid is based on proven statistics. In Bangladesh, where after the Acid Control Act- 2002 and the Acid Crime Prevention Act- 2002 put a restriction on the sale of acid, the incidence of such crimes waned, falling steadily from 367 cases in 2002 to 116 in 2009. Secondly, like Bangladesh, in India the police strength is among the lowest in the world. For every one lakh Indians, only 129 policemen are available. This renders ineffective the implementation of well-meaning laws. The rising number of crimes against women has exposed the lacunae. Then, the courts have their own backlog to deal with. The courts should also give specific orders for licences required for all acid traders. The sale of concentrated acid should be banned except for specific purposes and a system should be worked out for documenting all transactions involving the sale of acid. Also the Punjab and Haryana High Court's advice to the state governments of Punjab and Haryana and the UT administration of Chandigarh for free medical treatment and rehabilitation of the acid attack victims needs to be heeded. The fine of Rs 10 lakh on the perpetrator mentioned in the Criminal Law Amendment Bill -2013, is not enough to take care of the high cost of plastic surgery involved in such cases.
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Right to relief
Just
as much as the Punjab and Haryana High Court's award of Rs 60 lakh as compensation for the loss of three limbs to a boy is recognition of the right to life and personal liberty, the accident that condemned the child to a lifetime of misery is an act of criminal negligence. A high-tension cable of Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Limited that was dangerously close to the roof of the child's house in Panipat district - and maimed him when he touched it two years back - continues to remain in place. It is shocking how little officialdom would move, irrespective of the consequences. The incident should have triggered immediate action to shift the cable not only in the locality but also all over the state wherever power cables are a threat to life. The law requires power cables to be safely out of human reach. Compensation laid down under the Criminal Procedure Code for harm suffered in violence or by accident often barely cover medical expenses of the victim, if even that. But such incidents can leave victims rendered helpless for life, which is where the constitutionally guaranteed right to life and personal liberty kicks in. This, whoever, requires court interpretation of a case and its circumstances. Not all victims are in a position to secure such intervention. There is thus scope for statutory law that needs to be looked into, especially for cases where lives have been ruined because of obvious negligence of an individual or agency. Compensation is one part of the justice system; the other is fixing responsibility. There has to be criminal liability when there is clear violation of the law that leads to loss of life or property. Not only acts of commission that cause harm but even those of omission have to be punished. In Panipat, the power utility continues to be in violation of the law with the wires still hanging low.
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Nobbs did his part
There
is no doubt that Michael Nobbs,
the Australian who coached the Indian hockey team over the last two
years, and who was sacked on Tuesday, put the team on the right track.
He got the Indian players back to playing in the Indian style, instead
of the European style his predecessor, Jose Brasa of Spain, had
championed. Nobbs inherited a team playing in the European style -
with emphasis on defence, possession of the ball and stick-to-stick
passes. Traditionally, Indians have played in a more creative manner,
throwing the ball into open spaces and focusing on attack. Nobbs
sensed that that Indian hockey needed to get back to its roots. But to attack constantly for 70 minutes requires great fitness and player management. Nobbs got the players working hard on fitness and endurance. A big focus was on proper diet, and a bigger focus on player rotation, of which Indian coaches had little idea. Using 15 players, Nobbs made over 20 substitutions in one half, much higher than the 12-odd substitutions Brasa used to make. To make the players recover in the five-seven minute breaks they got, latest sports medicine innovations were used. The
Indian team had not qualified for the 2008 Olympic Games — the nadir
for Indian hockey. Under Nobbs, India qualified for the 2012 London
Olympics. It was not a very great feat - the team did it in easy home
conditions, against weak teams. But India went mad with joy, and the
team and Nobbs were lionised. It didn't last long - India failed to
win a single match in London. Nobbs was perplexed by his team's
inability to stick to plans in match situations. After that, the
results have been dismal. The most recent failure was at the Hockey
World League. Nobbs has said he became lonely, homesick and depressed
and did not want to continue. But he deserves a vote of thanks for
letting Indian players play in their natural style. India now needs a
coach who can take the team further on the path the Australian has put
it.
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Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.—Charles de Gaulle
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Psychological warfare
THE
militancy in Jammu and Kashmir is a mix of violence and clever use of
psychological warfare. Having failed to succeed in their designs to
defeat the security forces, militants are trying to discredit and
defame them to ultimately force them to be moved out. There are many
instances of false allegation against the Army operating under
difficult conditions in the militancy-affected area. According to a recent news report, a group of women representing various women's organisations has submitted a memorandum to the Defence Ministry urging a fresh investigation into the alleged mass rape in Kunan Poshpura village. The reported incident dates back to February 23, 1991, when soldiers belonging to 4thBattalion of Rajputana Rifles are supposed to have resorted to mass rape during the night of February 23-24. The allegation at that time was "… that up to 100 women were 'gang-raped without any consideration of their age, married, unmarried, pregnancy etc'. The victims ranged in age from 13 to 80". Unless one assumes that the whole battalion comprised depraved officers and men, the allegation is prima facie preposterous. The case had been investigated by different agencies at that time and the allegations had been found to be false. In light of this, what is even more disturbing is the reported comment of Salman Khurshid during his visit to the Valley on June 28, 2013. When questioned about this 22 years old incident, he is reported to have remarked, "What can I say? I can only say that I am ashamed that this happened in my country." In saying so the minister has gone against the findings of his own government. Nothing could be sadder. A few hard facts about the reality in J&K need recalling. In the beginning of this year Mirwaiz Mohammad Umar Farooq had openly appealed in Srinagar that Pakistan should do something or the 'freedom struggle' would die out. After that Hurriyat leaders went to Pakistan, except Syed Geelani. According to media reports they all met Gen Kayani, the Pakistani Army Chief. They undoubtedly would have met the ISI operatives too. The Mirwaiz also travelled to Muridke to meet Hafiz Saeed of LeT and spent more than a day there. Yasin Malik did the same and pictures of his meeting the LeT supremo were in the media. The attempted revival of terrorism is an outcome of those efforts. A recent ambush when eight soldiers lost their lives is one of the outcomes and is unlikely to be the last act of militants. The effort to get the old allegation of mass gang rape in Kunan Poshpura reopened is a related attack on the morale of the security forces. Repeated calls by some quarters for the removal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act fall in the same mode. Pakistan is known to have raised combined SSG and LeT teams for activities along the LoC. All these militancy related developments have an obvious link. The adversaries appear to be winning in every encounter because they are highly trained and motivated and well armed. With our LoC fences, they cannot cross into Kashmir without fire support from Pakistani posts. There has been a ceasefire in place since 2003. It is a strange ceasefire where Pakistan can open fire whenever they need to and we keep exercising restraint. When we were erecting the fence, Pakistan constructed a bund in many places along the LoC. As a result their small arms fire is more effective against us vis-à-vis ours. We have to respond with mortars and artillery to equalize that, making the retaliation more visible and seemingly escalatory. It is the start of a new 'freedom struggle - Jihad'. The intensity would surely pick up tempo after the Western troops pull out of Afghanistan next year and more jihadis are available to operate in J&K. Our head-in-the-sand policy is not leading us anywhere. We have to see and face the reality. Undoubtedly, secularism is the strength of our Constitution. But secular should not be synonymous There is little use banking on the J&K Government to handle the situation. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had aroused great hopes when he assumed charge. Unfortunately, he seems to have fallen prey to populism. The state political leadership remembers nationalism and patriotism only when they need free money from the ever-generous New Delhi. At other times the leadership there talks of 'over their dead bodies' whenever one mentions pulling the rest of J&K out of the clutches of the Valley. Their focus remains on getting back 'strayed' youth from Pakistan, each one with a Pakistani passport with multiple Pakistani wives and children in tow and kid-glove treatment of Hurriyat leaders and others over ground workers who are openly getting money from Pakistan and distributing it. Patriotism gets mentioned only when the State leadership crosses the south of Banihal. Most of their pronouncements and actions are willynilly providing a boost to a new phase of jihad. There is a need for J&K and India to wake up before the situation in Kashmir turns more serious and gets out of
hand.
The writer is a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff
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Romance of rain The
child in me leapt out from long years of hiding this morning when I streaked in falling rain, sans umbrella, taking my protesting bald pate and tingling goose bumps in my stride. I relived a childhood orgy, soaking in the pores of my hot, thirsty body the abundant, cooling gift from heaven to my heart's content. In Rajasthan where I was born, rain was an eagerly awaited event, a harbinger of joy, a celebration. A pitiless sun smote the bare earth in the months of May and June. No verandah, no hand fan, no shady tree provided relief from the stifling heat. Blinding sand storms came raging and enveloped the earth; the dust rose and darkened the sky for days on end. Squalls accompanied by thunder and lightning shook the trees to roots and displaced many tin roofs. Finally when raindrops lashed the earth, it emitted hot fumes. A musky scent rose from the pores of the happy earth. We children threw our clothes and bolted out in the pouring rain, shrieking with joy. It rarely lasted beyond half an hour and we returned home to our mothers scolding, drenched and dripping, our teeth clattering blissful and fulfilled. The raindrops danced and drummed on my bald pate, making some kind of monsoon melody. They trickled down my face, wiggling down my back, sending shivers down my spine. By the time I completed one round of the internal periphery road of the housing society, fringed by tall drooping Ashoka trees, I was drenched to the bone. But I was enjoying the long forgotten bliss of a direct shower from the clouds. It was a hazy, hushed Sunday morning, not a soul was stirring out. The shining Ashoka and Maulshri leaves whispered softly at the touch of raindrops, a koel called in the distance. After a while the rain slowed down to fine droplets floating in still silent air and I was reminded of a line from a Mirabais song: Nanhi nanhi boondan meha barase, bhanak suni Hari awan ki (Rain falls in tiny droplets and methinks I hear His footsteps). The Arab Sheikhs, like we Rajasthanis, hanker for the rains. I believe just before the onset of the monsoon they descend in hoards on Mumbai, and when it begins pouring, go wild dancing on hotel terraces, donning their long toga and the rope-tied headgear, wonder stuck at this heavenly miracle, hailing Allah and His kudarat! This year the excessive rains in the hills brought misery and devastation in Uttarakhand and earned the wrath of people. I was reminded of a story my mother used to tell me on rare occasions of excessive rain causing a house collapse or other damage, of a chieftain in the desert fastness of Rajasthan, whose large family and livestock were washed away in a freak downpour. Lone survivor of this stark tragedy, he stoically remarked: Sau karva, sau karvani, poot sapooti dhaya/ Meha to barsya hi bhala, honi ho so hoy (A hundred male camels, a hundred female camels, sons and their mothers have I lost in the downpour; yet the rains are a blessing and beneficent, whatever losses one may
incur).
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Time running out for ‘71 POWs India
is helping other countries trace its missing soldiers from World War II in the Northeast, but our country has not shown the will to trace its own men even after a Major wrote a letter in 1974 saying he was alive along with 20 other officers. On October 17, 2012, the Department of Defence POW at the Missing Personnel Office of the US announced that the remains of two airmen missing in action from the Vietnam War had been identified and would be buried with full military honours. In an investigation conducted over 17 years to identify the remains, scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) used circumstantial evidence and forensic identification tools. India, too, is cooperating with the US to find its missing personnel in the Northeast. As per the BBC News (June 24, 2008): “A US team is visiting the remote state of Arunachal Pradesh in north-east India to search for the remains of US pilots who crashed during the WW-II.” India has also promised to help Bangladesh find its soldiers believed to have been killed in the 1971 war and buried in West Bengal, through a DNA analysis of the remains. Army records But consider India's record in regard to its own missing defence personnel. Records of 15 Punjab say two officers, two JCOs and 72 other ranks went missing while 9 Jat notes one officer as missing. Records of Pakistan's 28 Cavalry states an officer of 9 Jat was captured. Did the Indian Government take cognisance of these reports when it sent back 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war (POW) and got back ours? Should the Air force and Army not have made sure that those listed as missing were accounted for? In war, mistakes happen. In the mayhem of the battle, 5 Assam Regiment noted Major Ashok Suri as killed in action and sent a helmet to his parents with two bullet holes and bearing someone else's name. His body was not found. Should the Army not have made a separate category for those whose bodies were not recovered? Those who were seen being captured should be recorded as POW. Major Suri's status changed when his father Dr RS Suri received a handwritten note from him dated December 7, 1974. The letter contained a slip in which his son had written, “I am okay here.” The covering note read: “Sahib, Valaikumsalam. I cannot meet you in person. Your son is alive and is in Pakistan. I could only bring his slip, which I am sending you. Now going back to Pakistan.” It was signed “M. Abdul Hamid”.
Letter fails to move In August 1975, he received another missive dated “June 14/15/16, 1975, Karachi”. The letter said: “Dear Daddy, Ashok touches thy feet to get your benediction. I am quite okay here. Please try to contact the Indian Army or the Government of India about us. We are 20 officers here. Don't worry about me. Pay my regards to everybody at home, specially to mummy, grandfather — the Indian Government can contact Pakistan government for our freedom”. The then Defence Secretary had the handwriting confirmed as Ashok's and changed the official statement from “killed in action” to “missing in action”.
Major Suri's faith in the Indian Government was to be belied as it shifted the file of “missing in action” from the old Secretary to new ones; old ministers to new ones, with no coherent policy. He continues to be “killed in action” in the Army records. In 1996, Riaz Khokhar, foreign minister of Pakistan in India, said in an interview to a news channel that they knew of no Indian Armymen in their jails. He said if they were there, they may be under assumed names. A strange explanation, which could mean the names of the prisoners were changed, like Kashmir Singh became Ghulam Mohammed, or — as we saw in the jail records of 10 Pakistani prisons in 2007 when our government sent us to look for its soldiers without having done any groundwork — that a Kamal became Qamal. So many names could be changed accidentally or deliberately. Fourteen of us visited the jails in Pakistan even though we had asked our government that we wanted to see records of the Army and visit Attock, which is a military jail, and not civilian jails. We had also told the government that it was not our job to look for these men as they were the nation's soldiers, and as civilians, there was little we could do. In 1979, Samarendra Kundu, Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs, submitted a list of 40 defence personnel thought to be in Pakistani jails, in the Lok Sabha in response to a question by Amarsinh Pathawa and said: “The Indian Government is making all efforts and is in constant touch with the Pakistani government through their embassy for their release.” Why was it that it did not stir any politician or defence chief to take up the issue on top priority? Dr RS Suri's persistence turned the apathy into some action but the fact remains that till the will is not transmitted by the head of the government of a state to the other that the country is determined to get to the bottom of the case and would not rest until they get their soldiers back, there was and is little likelihood that anything would happen.
Lack of will The Prime Minister expresses his helplessness: “What can we do when they do not agree?” Are these the words of the Prime Minister of the world's largest democracy? The current President said: “Do you think they would be alive now?” Shocking insensitivity! And who does it hurt? The nation that does not care for its own men. Contrast this with the Israelis who traded 3,000 Palestinians for one Israeli soldier.
The Army and Air Force have been equally insensitive — asking for signatures on pieces of paper which changed the categories from “missing” to “presumed killed in action” so pensions could be released. Two Indian jawans, Jagseer Singh and Mohd Arif, were captured in September 1999. When Pakistan president Parvez Musharraf visited India in 2001 for the Agra Summit, he denied Indian soldiers were in Pakistan jails. At that time, these two jawans were there. They were brought to Adiala jail in Rawalpindi from an undisclosed location, where they had been kept for five years in 2004. Jagseer Singh wrote to his mother, following which the Indian Government sought their release. However, in response to Major Suri's letter, the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of External Affairs told the distraught families to keep quiet as the soldiers may be killed. The government sat even more quietly for the next 41 years doing nothing more than periodically asking Pakistan politely to return its soldiers. Mohan Lal Bhaskar, a former spy who was repatriated in 1974 after six years, met Major Ayaaz Ahmed Sipra and Col Asif Shafi of Pakistan's 2 Punjab in Kot Lakhpat jail, Lahore. They told him they met a certain Gill of the IAF and a Capt Singh of the Indian Army at the Fort of Attock. Bhaskar wrote this in his book “I Spied for India”. Ayaaz Ahmed and Shafi later moved to the US, where Shafi was traced by the son-in-law of Sqn Ldr Jain, another officer missing and believed to be in a Pakistani jail since the 1971 war. Shafi confirmed he had met Wg Cdr Gill in Attock. Several Pakistan defence officers were arrested in 1973 on charges of conspiring to overthrow Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's government and were jailed in Attock. Last year Jaspal Singh, a jawan of 15 Punjab who had gone missing, but whose name is not on the list, met a carpenter in Oman and spoke to him in Punjabi. He was dressed like a Muslim. When the carpenter told him he was from Durgi, Jaspal said his father-in-law was from there. He enquired about his wife and son but told the carpenter not to tell his family. The carpenter returned and confirmed the story. However, neither did the government nor the Army follow the lead. Jaspal's family lives in a limbo, with no reason to disbelieve the carpenter and no way to rejoice in the news that he is alive. On our persistence, the government set up the Committee for Monitoring Missing Defence Personnel (CMMDP) some years ago. Currently, its chairman is Vice-Admiral Pattanaik. The committee has not contacted the affected families so far. Its members meet once in six months. It has not even summoned old war diary records from units or bothered to ask Major Suri's brother for his letter. Why enact a farce of helping the Americans or Bangladeshis find their dead soldiers when we are not even willing to search for our living? Apart from making annual statements in the Lok Sabha, Preneet Kaur, MoS for External Affairs, made a statement similar to Samarendu Kundu's last year. Had the government shown any tenacity, it would not have suffered the ignominy of letting its officers die in a foreign land even as their families know no peace. The government can redeem itself a little if it takes a cue from countries which have set up similar committees that make all-out efforts, follow each lead, and respect a man who has fought for his country and deserves better than to be left to languish in a foreign land. The US has a POW medal of honour. Defence Minister AK Antony promised us when we returned from the emotionally gruelling trip in 2007 that India would not stop till it gets to the truth. Some of these men may still be alive. Stranger things have happened.
Questions, no answers *
Over time, some civilians and Indian spies returned from jails in Pakistan. They were debriefed by the Indian Government before being allowed to return to the mainstream. Some of these men spoke of meeting and seeing missing Indian Army personnel in Pakistani jails. Are these claims false? *
Have similar stories been concocted by emotionally distraught relatives? *
How does one explain the evidence and the acknowledgement of the government, which was the first to make a statement in the Lok Sabha in 1979 that 40 defence personnel were believed to be in Pakistani jails?
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