The Army on Thursday cautioned it would use force if its counter-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir are hindered by pro-freedom crowds.
“In case a crowd takes law in its hands and threatens life and property, security forces will be constrained to initiate appropriate action to counter it,” it said in a statement here issued to explain a recent incident in which two Kashmiri youth were injured in troops’ firing in Aishmuqam area of southern Anantnag district. A new trend has emerged in Kashmir Valley. It is not just massive attendance in militant funerals — a routine occurrence now, which has got security officials worried — people in large numbers come out of their homes and start chanting pro-azadi slogans on seeing security forces arriving in their area to take on militants. Often they move close to encounter sites and even target security forces with stones if they try to come in their way.
In several such cases in the recent past, womenfolk also joined them and sung traditional wanwon to encourage the trapped or holed up militants. During one of the longest fire fights in which five security personnel, including two Army officers and all the three militants, were killed at Sempora, Pampore, near here last month, mosque loudspeakers were also used to broadcast rebellious songs to hearten militants.
While the encounter was underway, residents took to the streets in the neighbourhood areas to chant pro-freedom slogans. As they tried to relocate to the encounter site, the police fired teargas canisters and pellet guns to push them back. Fifteen protesters and five policemen were injured in clashes.
In an earlier incident, two students were killed when the Army fired live ammunition after sections of protesters, while chanting pro-azadi slogans, turned violent near an encounter site in Kakapora area of southern Pulwama district. Neither of them were part of the violent crowd, residents claimed later. The killings triggered widespread protests in the Valley and the authorities had to impose curfews or curfew-like restrictions in several volatile areas, including central Srinagar amid rising anger.
Following the bloody incident, governor N.N. Vohra held a series of meetings with the police, Army and other law enforcing authorities to discuss the fallout and issued strict instructions to exercise restraint while dealing with such situations. As crowd interference near encounter sites is becoming a norm, the Jammu and Kashmir police on February 18 issued an advisory to the public, asking them to desist from it. “In case an encounter starts anywhere, the people, particularly the parents of young adults of nearby area(s), are requested not to allow their wards to move towards the encounter site. In case they are outside home, they be recalled to home”, the advisory had said.
The police also imposed a ban on any assembly of people within the radius of two kilometres of an encounter site and advised people to stay indoors and not peep out of windows of their houses to avoid being hit by stray bullets. It further said that since Section 144 CrPC immediately comes into force at and around encounter sites, assembly of five or more people near these areas is unlawful.
But neither police advisory nor Kakapora-like incidents could serve as a deterrent. Kashmir Valley continues to witness protests by surging crowds around the sites of encounters between security forces and militants.
On Wednesday, a huge crowd assembled near a poplar nursery outside Padgam Pora-Wandakpora villages of Pulwama where a large group of Lashkar-e-Taiba militants were engaged in a gunfight with security forces. Though two militants, including Abu Okasha, involved in the August 5, 2015 ambush on a BSF convoy near the garrison town of Udhampur were killed, the others, including most wanted LeT commander Abu Dujana, escaped through the security forces’ dragnet.
A senior police officer confirmed that the people have in several instances, while chanting pro-freedom slogans, targeted the security forces with stones in their attempts to create situations which could be seized by holed up militants to escape or, at least, receive encouragement.
The Army said on Thursday that about 1,000 people had gathered at Aishmuqam’s Magray mohalla where the troops had launched an operation against militants reportedly present in the area last week. The crowd tried to disrupt the operation “in clear violation of existing orders which had also been recently reiterated by the police”, it said, adding that a section of the crowd also resorted to heavy stone-pelting amid chanting of slogans, injuring a dozen personnel, including a JCO of the Army and an ASI of the J&K police. “The incident has been investigated and it is established that the security forces were forced to open cautionary fire to prevent any further injury, loss or damage to personnel, weapons equipment and other government property in which two persons resorting to stone-pelting were injured,” it said, warning that similar acts would evoke “appropriate action” from troops in future.
