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Shameful silence

The irrepressible Sam Manekshaw once chuckled that anything stationary for three days in the Central Secretariat was marked “classified” or…

Shameful silence

PHOTO: AFP

The irrepressible Sam Manekshaw once chuckled that anything stationary for three days in the Central Secretariat was marked “classified” or “secret”. There is, however, nothing funny in the home ministry tendering the “not in national security interest” plea to try and side-step the apex court’s directive to place before it, by 30 December 2016, the report of the expert committee that examined the use of the much-despised pellet-guns to quell public protest in the Kashmir Valley.

For, while there is nothing “secret” about the weapon produced by the Indian Ordnance Factory Board, the political fall-out of the report could prove extremely embarrassing.

Not only has the home minister back-tracked from a promise to find an alternative mob-control device, the IOFB has deleted information on pellet-guns from its website: which continues to “advertise” tanks, armoured cars, mortars, field guns, etc.

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That the ministry is aware that it is on shaky ground is confirmed by its offer to submit an “unpublished, interim” report to the court in a sealed cover so that its findings are not made public. Perhaps North Block is apprehensive that the petitioners, the not-too-friendly J&K High Court Bar Association, will exploit the report to fuel continuing unrest in the Valley, but the reality remains that the victims of the pellet-guns tell their horror stories “live” every day.

What also needs explanation is why the report has not been finalised after several months: have the “experts” been directed to go slow?

It is not the “silence” of the home ministry/security forces that arouses distrust, no less despicable is the manner in which members of the all-party delegation that visited the Valley have diluted their condemnation of the weapon: the CPI-M’s Sitaram Yechury had been forcefully vocal at the time, now he has other matters over which to try and raise political storms.

Nor has the home ministry been able to explain why the “non-lethal” weapon has not been used for riot-control beyond Kashmir. Civil rights activists have flayed the pellet-guns as inhuman, pointed to hundreds of people who suffer impaired vision when, contrary to prescribed procedure, the pellet-guns were fired into their faces. Some two decades back the security forces incurred public animosity by their “cordon-and-search” operations in the Valley — indiscriminate, frequent and irresponsible use of pellet-guns have only furthered the acrimony and discord.

That few outside the Valley remain little concerned about the maiming impact of pellet-guns only exacerbates their sense of alienation. That air of indifference being articulated by the “intemperate” remarks from the top military brass a few days back. Will folk in the Valley feel even more “distanced” if the judiciary accepts the home ministry’s “not in the nation’s security interest” alibi on the pellet-gun report?

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