J&K Police invites stone-pelters for career counselling

Srinagar: Around 400 Kashmiri youth, half of them girls, have been invited to a career counselling fête being organised by the police at a college in Shopian town, 52 kilometres south of Srinagar, on Thursday.

The distinctiveness of the gathering is that many of the invitees were those young boys and teenagers from south Kashmir who have been involved in stone-pelting incidents that overwhelmed the Valley in the aftermath of the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in July 2016. Four districts of south Kashmir — Kulgam, Anantnag, Shopian and Pulwama — were the worst hit in the mayhem in which over 80 people died, mainly in  firing by security forces.

“We are expecting a good number of such youth, approximately 250, who have agreed to shun stone-pelting and return back in normal life,” said Jammu and Kashmir DGP Shesh Paul Vaid. “We want these children to build their career. The Prime Minister said that he wants to see pens and laptops in the hands of Kashmiri youth, and not stones, and the J&K police is in a subtle way contributing towards the effort. We don’t want these young boys to die or get involved in cases. People play politics and spoil their career,” he said.

Among the experts who have been invited by the police to hold counselling sittings with the students and youth include Prime Minister Development Fellows and career and educational consultants Sadashiv Nayanpally and Aniket Choudhary, as well as Kashmir Administrative Services (KAS) officers Shoaib Noor and Dr Salma Nabi.

“We’re going to help these children to know and understand themselves and the world of work in order to make career, educational, and life decisions,” Shopian SSP Tahir Saleem said. 

A few months ago, the J&K police had started invoking the teachings of Islam against stone-pelting by “misguided” youth. It did create an impact on sections of the local population, but the killing of Wani weakened the campaign. The mayhem continued for more than four months and stone-pelting still goes on in the Valley, mainly on Fridays.

With the killing and maiming of hundreds of such youths in retaliatory action by security forces failing to dissuade others from taking to the streets, the police decided to address the issue differently. “We, in an effort to curb the stone-pelting pastime, started conducting counselling sessions with them to guide them on ways to lead better lives and it is working,” said Mr Vaid.

Apart from holding counselling sessions, the police has also helped some of the habitual stone-pelters in settling in their lives by providing them financial aid.

Others have been encouraged to join the police force itself. Apart from holding open counselling session, the modus operandi adopted in that the youth found involved in stone-pelting through CCTV footage or intelligence inputs are picked up and detained at police stations or other detention centres where police officers and ‘experts’ within the organisation or those hired from outside hold counselling sessions with them. At times, their parents are also called and sent back after requesting, and sometimes even warning, them to keep their children away from the activity “which is going to ruin their lives”.

Tanveer Ahmed (name changed) is a Srinagar youth who was successfully persuaded to give up the stone-pelting pastime and is now running a mobile-repairing outlet said, “I was twice arrested by the police. I initially denied the charge but they had a video with them showing me leading a group of youth into stone-pelting at Saraf Kadal (a central Srinagar locality)”. Ahmed alleged he was brutally beaten up by two cops inside a police station. 

On the second occasion, his father was also called to the police station and warned that if Ahmed again indulged in stone-pelting he would be booked under the State’s stringent Public Safety Act (PSA) and sent to a jail outside the Valley. The poor man broke down in the police station and it was when Ahmed decided to call it a day.