JK News Today
Srinagar, April 5:
The police, army, and the paramilitary forces involved in counter-insurgency operations in the Kashmir valley haven’t had much luck when it came to talk a militant out of fighting them at a site of a gun battle. The militant rather prefers to die fighting them and be seen as a “martyr” than to lay down arms and be mocked as a “traitor.”
Nonetheless, not to be daunted, the security agencies feel that from now on they would make an offer of surrender more forcefully at a gun battle site to a militant to persuade him to give up. If the police failed to convince him to surrender only then would the government forces move in to kill the militant. The new decision, according to security officials, is to “ensure a peaceful summer in Kashmir.”
A police official said the new line of action was in keeping with the Chief Minister’s orders who, last year, had doubled the “reward amount.” “The move came after reports of large number of local militants joining the militant ranks,” he said. “If we talk about the figures of first three months this year, 23 boys joined various militant ranks. Only three returned home on the call of their parents. This signifies the gravity of the situation,” said the official.
The Inspector General of Police (Kashmir), S. P. Pani, said that wherever the police gets a chance to make a local militant surrender, it won’t waste that. “A militant has to be urged to come out. We have been doing it and so far five militants have surrendered at the encounter sties,” he said.
“Whether the militant is killed or he surrenders, reward money is same. It is specifically not written in the standard operating procedure (SOP) that the reward will be given for killing a militant or making him surrender,” he said. “But yes, the first priority will be to make the local militants surrender.”
Pani said that the reward would go to an officer involved in a counter-insurgency operation for “Developing and completing the Operation.” “We will start with the surrender offer to militants at the encounter sites where there is no firing at the initial stage,” he said.
The police, according to a source, are seriously thinking of training some of its officers across the Kashmir valley in “negotiating skills.” “At present, the officers (SSPs) are using their service experience to persuade boys to surrender. The proposal to impart officers a special training through experts is under consideration,” he said.
After the Chief Minister announced the doubling of the reward money for the forces, especially the police, for catching local militants alive, the agencies involved in an operation will get Rs 12 lakh for killing A++ category militant. Earlier, the amount was Rs 10 lakh only, a police source revealed. For killing an A + category militant, the reward money is Rs.7.5 lakh. “For category B militants, reward money is Rs 3 lakh and Rs 2 lakh for category C militants’ respectively,” he said.
And yet the police feel that the reward for “avoiding to kill a local militant” is more because the recent killing of 13 militants in Shopian and Anantnag created “major law and order problem across Kashmir.”
Courtesy: Greater Kashmir
