Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir’s Director General of Police (DGP), Shesh Paul Vaid, said on Wednesday that the youth found indulging in stone-pelting along the Valley’s streets are now increasingly returning to normal life. He said the change was taking place as a result of the police’s “relentless effort” to persuade these youths to shun the “path of self-destruction and live their lives happily”.
“In a small way things are changing. These boys are being misled. In order to bring them back on the right track, the police is doing its bit,” Mr Vaid said in an interview to this newspaper. While referring to the career counselling mela for the Valley’s youth being held in southern Shopian on Thursday, he said, “It is just a sample and I’m going to replicate it in other districts also.”
He said that the boys who would hurl stones and salute Pakistan’s flag, or were being lured into militancy, and tread the path of destruction “are today willing to enroll themselves for IAS, engineering and IT courses coaching”.
When asked about the parents of these youth being summoned to police stations to ask them to dissuade their children from indulging in stone-pelting, and if this has made any difference on ground, he said, “You must understand there is the threat of guns looming large over them, but, in many cases, people came forward. Our officers spoke to them in a polite way to persuade them to take their children away from this pastime”.
“My mission is, even if I’m able to save just one human life, I will think I have done justice with my job. We have recently saved 17 boys from going astray and we think we have done something very big. You know the road they had chosen to tread upon could only lead to death and destruction,” he said.
He confirmed that the police is also trying to encourage these youths to join it. “We’re giving coaching for that also. Recently, through video conferencing, I asked my SPs to give these boys coaching to join the J&K police, the CRPF and other forces. We are conducting tests to fill up 650 vacancies of sub-inspectors and 5,000 of those of constables,” he said.
Instead of embarking upon a wrong track they should join police,” he said. The police chief said that it was true that money was being pumped into Kashmir to keep the stone-pelting pot boiling. “We’ve inputs that money is coming from across the border to fund the stone-pelting,” he said.
