Kashmir, where they blow the house to kill militants but do not catch them

SRINAGAR: Encounters in Jammu and Kashmir are becoming something of a routine: the militants who engage the security forces are so committed that they prefer to be killed rather surrender. But more than that, it also shows the problems with training and handling by seciryt forces who fail to capture the militants even when they are completely surrounded. World over, the strategy of wait and exhaust and tire out works but in India, the first preference is to kill them in gun fire or blow up the entire building and kill the militants.

Indian media has stopped asking the government why efforts are being given up to capture these people which in fact can lead to more information and more arrests and more effective way of handling and stemming militancy?

Or is it a fact that the government prefers to kill them in an encounter rather than capture them after an encounter and then kill them in a fake encounter?

Only last week, the government claimed that after a fierce 12-hour gun battle, the J-K Police and Army, in a joint operation, killed two militants in north Kashmir. This was last Wednesday. Even before the identity of militants was to be ascertained, the police claimed said that they belonged to Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM). How the hell the cops came to that conclusion was not explained.

Deputy Inspector General (North Kashmir) A Q Manhas went on record to say that efforts were on to ascertain their identity. Even if one presumes that the encounter was a genuine one and that the police did act, as it claimed, after a specific tip-off about the presence of militants at Kachu village of Wagoora is north Kashmir’s Baramulla district, it is not clear why it was not possible to catch them alive when J-K Police and Army’s 29 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) had indeed cordoned the village in the night and the assault was launched at the break of dawn.

The police claimed that when the joint team of police and Army tried to storm the house, the militants opened fire resulting in a fierce gunfight. The gunfight stretched for 12 hours following which the security forces blew up the house resulting in the death of both the militants. DIG Manhas told reporters, “We couldn’t save the house. We had to blast it off.”

The newspapers that reported the encounter did not raise a finger to ask why the effort was not made to catch them alive.