Opinions of Indian Engineers too is ashamed of being called Indian because of the heinous crime recently committed by a group of about 200 uniformed men deployed in the state of Chhattisgarh to fight the so-called local terror groups of the region now commonly referred as the Naxalites.
The Indian offline and online media are full of the reports about the terror these uniformed officials unleashed on the poorest of the poor of the Indian populace residing in some of the most inaccessible hamlets in the east central regions of India in this state.
The uniformed men, a few days ago, committed all kinds of atrocities on the poor tribal women and children of Bijapur district-one of the sparingly populated and inaccessible region in India which used to be part of the larger Bastar district. The following are some of the online media news titles about this shameful incident ( Readers can read the full news by clicking the titles):
The Indian Express Report : "Bijapur-Policemen raped women and indulged in loot"
The Hindustantimes Report: "Chhattisgarh rape: Judicial probe says cops killed tribal girl"
There are scores like that on the internet and other media now. Related news details are pouring out. As these regions are practically inaccessible for the rest of India due to the decades long internal civil conflicts between the terror outfits and the governmental forces, it would be very difficult to ascertain the detailed facts.
Shri R.K Vij IPS who is the Additional Director General of Police in command of the anti-naxal operations of the state for quite some time now must be fully ashamed of the deeds of his lower ranks who did such inhuman acts! This top cop may also be cursing the decisions he had taken decades ago to leave his profession as an engineering college lecturer to join the coveted Indian Police Service! What could be the reason why even a top police officer having a high educational background in structural engineering failed in inculcating human values in the minds of his armed security men entrusted with the job of law enforcement? How do they dare to do such atrocities against their hapless countrymen and women for whose safety they are employed by the state?
Some two and a half decades ago, Naxallite problems were unheard of in the state of Madhya Pradesh from which the present state of Chhattisgarh had been carved out. An engineer working with the government sector shared some of the things that a junior police inspector working with the Special Armed Forces (SAF) of Madhya Pradesh camped in the district of Durg happened to tell him.
This inspector was from South India and was on the verge of his retirement. He told our engineer decades ago like this:
"Sir, these tribal people of Bastar are very simple folks. But I tell you, the bad policies and acts of our government will turn many of them to become anti-establishment in the years to come. This whole area will become a terrorist infested area. If you still be in this place, please remember my words when it actually happens!"
This engineer asked him the reasons for this prediction that he made. He reluctantly divulged many inside stories of the various kinds of atrocities the very same forces to which he was a subordinate officer were doing in the remote hamlets of the tribal people. He also divulged the reasons why the young uniformed men do such acts!
" Sir, our battalions are patrolling these regions to prevent the naxalite infiltration from the adjoining Andhra Pradesh" He continued. "Though the government allocates lots of funds for these, corruption at higher levels in the police force do not allow these funds to reach the lower ranking policemen who are to actually do the field work in the difficult terrains. Our men are not provided with enough food, shelter, transport and such other facilities which are essential for any human being. The top officers treat the lower rung constables like slaves. They are ragged and harassed always and never treated as human beings. That is the strategy our police culture has been adopting for keeping the men ready to pounce upon other human beings when needed. That is the police training culture. Many top officials in our forces believe that this is essential to keep the young jawans unflinching to inflict injury to any other human being."
"Sir, some of our boys do catch the helpless village women and girls whenever they get and opportunity to satiate their biological urges. Even those of us in the patrol groups who have some humanity left within us cannot prevent them in such situations because they are mad at those times and can even kill us with the automatics they carry which our administration would write off as encounter casualties! You can only imagine the hate these tribal people have in their minds now against us due to all these. There is no surprise then that their youths get lured by the extremists to fight the government machinery in the future!"
"What do you think the way out?" Our engineer had asked him.
" There are some higher ups somewhere who see big personal gains for some of them when armed insurgency is kept alive for which government funding goes in plenty without any audits of any sort. They do not wish to make peace. When things are all okay, they cannot gain. So knowingly or unknowingly they keep promoting and encouraging the conflicts every now and then. Insulting the women folk of the tribal villages in the inaccessible regions are the best way to make them infuriated. When some of our boys find that the seniors would never question their misdeeds or punish them for that they become real evil to repeat such things with impunity. The good ones in the forces become the silent and hapless spectators! Our politicians have no guts to go against those determined and corrupt senior or junior officers. Same is the case with many of our bureaucrats. That is the safest thing that they can do. So they always officially deny any reported incidents of misdeeds by our forces. The official version of any police atrocity anywhere in this country would be denial of the facts and cover ups actions and not against the corrupt officials. It is only after years later, the real stories come out. This has to change, if the system is to improve!' The about to retire police official confessed to our engineer.
Our engineer, though felt remorse by hearing these inhuman police stories, felt also relieved about the fact that he did not try to compete for the union public service examinations to get in to the Indian Police Service!
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