ALERT: A consceince encountered
Dr Sandeep Pandey
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I've often been blamed by friends and colleagues for not keeping secrets to
myself. It has been my practice to share information with people whenever I
feel my conscience burdened. From my experience I can say that whenever I've,
under such circumstances, shared the truth, it may have put some people in
inconvenient positions but in the long run it proved to be right thing to do.
But, I must confess, I've never encountered something as big as this. Till now
it has been only very personal things or at the most matters dealing with my
friends or colleagues. But the information I possess now is of societal and
national significance. I'm revealing it because it can save two lives. I'm
quite aware, that in the process, I'm raising a finger at the departments
concerned with internal and external security of the country and can possibly
attract some punitive action too. But when I weighed the pros and cons of this
I was convinced that if by revealing this
information lives of two youth can be saved then I must do it. I must take the
risk.
The UP Police in a planned joint operation with the army is likely to kill two
Kashmiri youth (obviously Muslim), already picked up and in their custody
somewhere in Meerut , in an `encounter' with these `dreaded terrorists.' The
drama would be enacted in the Lucknow cantonment area, the most plausible
location for an anti-national to be encountered in. Two AK-47 guns, already
bought from Nepal and brought through the Bahraich route, would be shown to
have been recovered from these `terrorists. ' Very high level police officials
and Colonels of the Army are involved in planning this Jamia Nagar encounter
equivalent of UP level operation. An encounter specialist, posted at the
Cantonment Police Station till recently, has been chosen to implement the
design. Recently, UP police has been presented in poor light because of
contradictory (and competitive) claims made by Delhi and Mumbai police for
having arrested terrorists which they claim were responsible
for bomb blast incidents in UP. The question raised then is who are the people
the UP police has arrested earlier who are being claimed to be responsible for
these same incidents. UP police doesn't want to remain behind in the game of
bravery now being played by police elsewhere. They are anxious to demonstrate
that they too can carry out high profile encounter operations like the one at
Jamia Nagar in Delhi . It is a different matter that civil society groups and
some media have questioned the bona fides of the Jamia Nagar operation itself
and the credibility of the government is at stake.
The objective of the above operation is to bring laurels to UP police. The
operation would be justified in the name of national interest. UP is under
pressure because it has been projected as the breeding ground for terrorist.
The UP police wants to show that it is doing its part in countering terrorism.
If this is true then nothing can be more shameful. Most of the newspaper
reading citizens would go along with the police version and not question it in
the national interest if such an operation takes place. However, I've decided
that my commitment to my nation is in ensuring justice to its citizens or at
least questioning what is not just. Killing of innocent citizens in such
operations or incidents like hunger deaths and farmer suicides are all
government's responsibility and no such incident can be pardoned.
However, if what I've written above is totally based on imagination run wild
and doesn't have an iota of truth in it then I'll be most relieved person,
because I shudder to think that responsible government institutions could be
engaged in such gross things. I obviously apologize to the police and army for
having questioned their integrity. But the fact of the matter is that police
has lost so much credibility in this country that I thought it fit to bring out
the matter in open for the sake of two Kashmiri youth. We hope that not only
they will not be `encountered' but no innocent will be subjected to such a
fate, ever.
By Dr Sandeep Pandey
A-893, Indira Nagar, Lucknow-226016, U.P.
Telephone: 0522-2347365, Mobile : 9415022772 (Arundhati Dhuru)
