Missing: credibility

When the Congress-PDP government came to power in Jammu and Kashmir in 2002, it recognised the hugely damaging impact on the state of encounter deaths and extra-judicial killings by the police and security forces. Therefore, as part of its 8220;healing touch8221; approach to governance, it promised in its common minimum programme to investigate all cases of custodial killings and to mete out appropriate punishment to those responsible for such deaths.

That encounter deaths should continue to occur in the state despite these salutary intentions points to the alarming normalisation of such violence. The Azad government is at present faced with extremely embarrassing evidence that its police, including senior officers, went about snuffing out the lives of three innocent men picked up from Ganderbal and later passing them off as 8220;Pakistani terrorists8221; and they were even applauded for their action. That their crimes would have remained undiscovered if it were not for the persistence of their relatives and the tracking down of a stolen mobile phone, indicates why there is such a deficit of trust in the Valley for the men in khaki. Insurgencies can only be fought by winning the confidence and support of the local people, but how can that happen when routine policing only contributes to increasing local alienation?

J038;K Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has promised prompt investigation and action. The credibility of his government hinges on how effective he proves to be in achieving this. He could consider bringing the CBI into the picture, as indeed the army had done in a similar case involving its personnel last year. Every man in uniform in the Valley should get the message that any death caused in an encounter which cannot be justified in terms of legitimate self-defence and in proper exercise of legitimate armed action amounts to homicide, plain and simple.