True Face of Dynamic Indian Armed Forces

True Face of Dynamic Indian Armed Forces
Zaheerul Hassan

January 15, of each year is being celebrated as Indian Army Day. The army authorities rather feeling proud on their self generated wonders should analyze the factors and causes which are taking their soldiers away from humanity and profession. The Indian Forces including Para Military Forces and police are playing in the hands of politicians. These opportunists are using them for crushing Sikhs, Muslims, Christens, Tamils, Sri Lankan, Kashmiri and harassing their political opponents. Carrying out such illegal intelligence and state sponsored activities totally converted the psyche of Indian soldiers. It becomes their second nature to commit unlawful and inhuman actions without considering their repercussions. Indian Armed forces are being known as Rogue Armed Forces. They are terribly involved in corruptions, looting, raping women, and drinking, unnatural and indecent acts, selling of issued items, embezzlements, theft, kidnapping, desertions, and disobedience of their seniors. Since 1947 there is not a single year could be found free from occurrence of criminal act amongst the troops. Quite frequently soldiers of Indian Armed Forces become the news of the day in locals, national and international media as a result of their involvement in malicious activities. Indian soldiers found committing immoral acts in peacekeeping forces too. On the night of 3 and 4 December at around 12:00 A.M. Indian troops of 36 RR and 146 Battalion CRPF barged in the house of Mohammad Abdullah Khatana in south Kashmir village at Dandipora, Kokernag.. The troops who were six in number asked them to switch off the lights before breaking the bolt of the main entrance. While narrating the incident the father of the victim said, we were locked in a room after thrashing me and my brother in law who also stays with us. After locking us in one room they took the victim in another room. The four troop’s gang raped the 17-year girl for an hour, while other two were guarding us. Its not one incident, in fact Indian Army are in the habits of repeating such type of valiance against the innocent public. According to Indian National Human Rights Commission, there were 1,039 cases of human rights violations ( which include, rapes, terrorizing, abduction & killing of innocent women, children youngsters & communal violence) by the security forces from 1990-1999, an average of 109 per year. I would also like to reveal here that no downward trend in crime ratio have been noticed so far. The indecent activities against the innocent agitators almost raised 100%. If we consider that it reduced by 50 % even then figures will be quite alarming for the international community. Indian Ministry of Defence reported that it filed 17 rape cases against army personnel whereas media reported 20 cases of rapes from 2003-2004 and by adding 50 % per annum will make this figure 80 till December, 2008. There are reports that till to-date only two or three rape cases have been concluded so far in a guilty verdict. In the remaining cases, the investigations are still in process or terminated because of tremendous pressure on the presidents of the court of inquiries, investigating officers or on the eye witnesses. After the death of Anti Terrorists Chief Karkara it becomes further difficult for the investigators to produce the genuine results in the criminal cases against powerful security forces.

Another bleak picture of Indian Armed Forces have been revealed by “The Times of India’ on October 3, 2005 , according to the newspaper War-room leaks, liquor scams and fake kills to garner gallantry medals and even rapes, murders has forced the authorities to stag 6,000 courts martial just since 20005. It further stressed that latest statistics show the, Army alone court-martialed 1,215 soldiers in 2000; 1,034 in 2001; 1,031 in 2002; 945 in 2003; and 872 in 2004. In just the last two years, over 20 rape and 10 murder charges have been leveled against soldiers.

The remaining soldiers including officers were charged on the offences of absent without leave, “acts prejudicial to good order and discipline” and desertion to accepting bribes and dishonest misappropriation of funds. The point here to be noted that it’s not only the “lower ranks” which have been afflicted; it included the cases of 30 officers too. The Tehelka generals, booze brigadiers and ketchup colonels, a major-general have been fired through court martial. Numbers of seniors and juniors officer were found guilty and punished too for the offence of bedazzlements. We can well imagine that officers of the rank of Lt General and Major Generals are under trial or convicted in various criminal cases. If the leaderships of an institutions gets themselves involved in such like offences then how they can stop their subordinates to abide by the laws.

It has also proved that Indian army officers are indulging themselves in terrorists and communal violence against minorities in and outside the country. On June 6, 1984 Indian military attacked on the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and 38 other Sikh temples throughout Punjab. It is an esteemed and established fact that Indian Army had slaughters over 20000 Sikhs and over 70000 Kashmiri in last few years. In 2008 Indian Army has also received a jolt when a serving Lt Col Srikant Prasad Purohit along with retired comrade were arrested in Malegaon Hindu violence against Muslims. Indian Police said that Lt. Col. Srikant Prasad Purohit, provided combat training and explosives to Hindu activists. The text messages he sent to another accused after Singh’s arrest were, “Cat is out of the bag. Singh has sung. Please delete my number”. Indian intelligence staging false flag terror attacks and blamed other neighbouring countries n their internal unrest which is actually prevailing due to their own overt and covert activities. On November 23, Andrew Buncombe, writing for the Independent, reported: “India is in something of a state of shock after learning from official sources that its first Hindu terror cell may have carried out a series of deadly bombings that were initially blamed on militant Muslims.” In addition to bombing attacks in the Muslim town of Malegaon in the western state of Maharashtra in September, the Hindu terror cells are allegedly responsible for last year’s bombing of a cross-border train en route to Pakistan, which killed 68 people, according to Buncombe. It should be noted that the head of the Maharastrian Anti-Terrorist Squad making the allegations about Hindu false flag terrorism, Hemant Karkare, was assassinated as he led his team into the Hotel Taj during the Mumbai attacks. “Killed in the line of duty, Hemant Karare was targeted as the man who was an immense problem for the BJP [the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party] because his forthright investigation revealed Hindutva terrorism and he was not about to stop. Clearly this invalidated the BJP campaign rhetoric against Muslim terrorism, but the BJP will still use the emotional fervor of Hindutva to win against the Congress party,” writes Allen Heart for Op Ed News. Can so called secular New Delhi Government, US, UK and Security Council satisfy the heirs of those innocent persons who were martyred and butchered for no fault by Indian security forces. Fareeda Sheik Liaqat, who lost her 10-year-old daughter in the bombing that Ramadan night in Malegaon and loved one of victimized persons of Samjota Express, Sikhs of India , Christian of Orrisa , Kashmiri , Tamil and Mizos are still crying and asking to so called civilized international community to provide them justice. But I don’t think that this paralyzed UNO, its Security Council and civilized society will raise their voice against Indian brutality as they are already quite on Israeli Naked Terrorism against innocent Palestinians women, children and others civilian. What an innocent words stated father one innocent girl. “I do not understand politics, but the person who killed my beautiful girl should be punished,” said Liaqat, 35, as she ran her hand over her daughter’s pink-and-blue Spiderman school bag. “She wanted to be a doctor.

Apart from crushing minorities, Indian security forces and police are charged with many allegations of rape and torture, and mostly the incidents are denied without any investigation and thus reminding us the barbaric era. Their cruelty and inhumanity can be judged from theses two examples which were published in Indian Media too, 1) On March 9, the National Commission for Women in India received a petition stating that 8 tribal women were raped in Sirisguda village of Chhattisgarh including a student in the 10th standard on Feb 26. The victims were dragged out of their home in the morning and gang raped by police personnel, some in uniform. These women victims were opposing the land acquisition by the government for the TATA Steel Company. A rape victim was able to read the nameplate of one of the men who raped her and his surname is Sahu. The Superintendent of Police refused to register the complaint in a first information report. 2) On February 3rd 2007, while returning from the market at 5 P.M., a young tribal woman was dragged into the forest and gang raped by 4 members of the Mizo Security forces deployed in Dantewada. The men of the Mizo Security force restrained her to prevent from shouting and she lost consciousness. When she regained consciousness, she was alone and naked in the woods. Her back was badly injured and her arms and legs were scratched and bruised from rocks and branches in the forest and now she can hardly move. None of the culprit was arrested because they were from security forces. In September, 2007 a Major General faced the music for sexual harassment. Maj Gen A K Lal, removed as commander of the strategically-located 3 Infantry Division at Leh in September 2007 after a woman officer accused him of “misconduct” and “misbehaviour”, held that he should be dismissed from service.
The dynamic Indian Army senior officers are least pushed about the moral of their troops. They were found involved in corruption while concluding contracts of frozen meat which are being supplied to the troops deployed in Indian held Kashmir and at Siachen area. They accept substandard items for the troops deployed at high altitude area and thus playing with the lives of the soldiers who are already fighting with the weather and locals against their wills. As per Indian press, one Serving Lt General Sahni, One Lt General (Retired) S K Dahiya, four Major Generals, two Brigadiers and eight officers are being charred for various irregularities in relation to procurement of “certain items of dry rations” for soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir .The scam involved the multi-corer purchase of around 1,000 tones of `masoor dal’, which was found adulterated and unfit for human consumption. There were also irregularities in the purchase of huge quantities of animal feed for the force in early-2005. If the court martial had gone ahead, Sahni would have become the first-ever Lt Gen, serving or retired, to face such military proceedings for alleged corruption. The names of Sahni, Dahiya, four Maj-Gens, nine Brigadiers, a Navy Commodore, two Commanders a Lt-Commander, an IAF Group Captain and a Coast Guard DIG have figured in a list of 21 senior officers facing corruption charges tabled by defence minister A K Antony in Parliament. The corruption charges range from selling military liquor in civilian markets to financial bungling in purchase of cereals, petrol and the like in the armed forces.

Their low morality and unethical actions can be observed from the recent example too when on January 11, 2009 an Indian Army Unit 43 Rashtriya Rifles has distributed wine bottles as ‘gift’ to the school children including girls, who had participated in the “National Anthem Singing Competition” on her Raising Day at Thanmandi in Poonch district As per Kashmir Media Service the residents and children of various schools of the area were invited to participate in sports and cultural events. There were total 20 participants’ students out of which 11 were girls’. As per sources a student Sakina Kousar said that she got ‘this award’ from army in a packing. “When I opened the packing, I found ‘Golden Eagle’ wine bottle”, she said. Sakina along with Rubeena Raina, Imtiyaz and Nazir have received wine bottles as award for their outstanding performance in singing national anthem of India “Jana Gana Mana”. The Kashmiri of Poonch observed strike on January 12, 2009 on the appeal of Muslim United Front Chairman Shafkat Wani.
In short all above narrated incidents are indicators of the declining standards of decency, integrity, sincerity, candor and discipline of Indian armed forces. Indian top brass should give a thought, whether they be able to defend their internal external boundaries in the presence of such a Rogue Armed Forces as proved by their own media. International Community should pressurize India and Israel to stop state terrorism against the innocent people. Pakistan Government should ask India to produce Lt Col Prasad for killing of passengers of Samjota Express.