Srinagar: Seemingly for the first time, Director General of Police RR Swain has broken his silence about the free hand given to security forces to fight against terror post abrogation of Article 370.
“When there was a terrorist incident, we were not properly asking the house owner, how did they (terrorists) come to his house? Saying that the house owner is sheltering the militants because of fear was not true. You were not allowing us to investigate properly. You did not let us ask where he was studying. Which mosque he was going to? Who gave him a gun? Who misled him? When you do not probe it, the people who glorify it will remain out of the net. Figures reveal that the people who have lost their lives came from poor families,” Swain said when asked whether political parties were preventing security forces from taking action.
DGP made these comments in an interview with a national television channel.
“Just neutralizing the man with the gun is not enough. It is important to fight the man with the gun because it is the immediate task at hand. A person, as I always say, is standing at the door with a gun, or you go out in the market and four gunmen are roaming around. So how will you move around? How will you go to school? So neutralizing them, and controlling them is very immediate. But going beyond that is much more important,” he said.
Swain noted that the enemy wanted to wear out the Indian state. “Holding the mug and the bucket and throwing water here and there will not suffice because you will get tired. There is an incessant supply of poisonous water. When we say fighting the terror it should be against the ecosystem. We should go beyond and find out where the supply is coming from. Where is the source of toxic water? Unless you disrupt that, you will get tired. That is what the enemy was aiming for. Their strategy was very simple. That they will wear out the Indian state by making it spend more and more,” he said.
Swain said there was certainly a gap in the effort and something was amiss when it came to choking the supply lines.
“As a manager of the security establishment, and a senior leader of the security force, I will be lying to myself, I will be lying to the blood and sweat of more than 1600 policemen and three times that of other security forces and several tens and thousands of civilians who have lost their lives. I would be lying to myself if I said that this aspect is also not included. When did a serious effort take place to stop the violence and to cut the cycle of violence? Suddenly there was a gap in the effort. Suddenly there was something amiss when it came to stopping the supply,” Swain replied when asked whether politicians were providing that oxygen to the ecosystem of terror
He said fighting the terror ecosystem did not mean only fighting against the man with the gun, it meant fighting against terror financing, terror logistics, and terror narrative which glorifies, endorses, and legitimizes in several subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
“And when you allow that, you create an environment where anyone who is a foot soldier with a gun and without the gun becomes a glorifier. So that glorification, that financing, that incentivization. In several hundred ways, you have not disincentivized it. So, I mean, the conclusions have to be drawn. It is objective. Even a judicial inquiry can be put into what I am saying. And I have reasons to say that any genuine inquiry into this would bring out very, very startling and very painful,” he said.
