The Hindu : Valour can wait, lethargy at work

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 14, 2004

National

National

Valour can wait, lethargy at work

By Praveen Swami

NEW DELHI, JAN. 13. Bureaucratic lethargy could ensure that the Border Security Force soldiers who gunned down India's most wanted terrorist do not receive the gallantry awards this Republic Day. BSF commanders in Srinagar had recommended gallantry medals for 14 personnel involved in the elimination of the Jaish-e-Mohammad's Kashmir Valley commander, Shahbaz Khan. But a full five months after Khan's August 29, 2003 elimination, the BSF has yet to forward the papers to the Union Home Ministry screening committee that scrutinises medal recommendations. As a result of the bureaucratic delay, the committee has been unable to process the recommendations.

Better known by his nom de guerre, Ghazi Baba, Khan was the architect of the 2001 attack on Parliament House. He was also believed to have participated in a dozen other terrorist actions, including a 1996 massacre of Kashmiri Pandits at Wandhama village. A close associate of the Jaish-e-Mohammad supreme commander, Masood Azhar, the 35-year-old Khan was a Pakistani national born near Bhawalpur in Pakistan's Punjab province.

Two of the 14 officers cited for their gallantry during the night-long encounter which claimed Khan's life were recommended for the Ashok Chakra. Constable Balbir Singh, who died during the encounter, was recommended for the top medal, along with the Deputy Commandant, N.N.D. Dubey, who suffered serious injuries. Seven other BSF soldiers injured in the operation were also recommended medals. The committee last met on January 8, sources said, but had no application from the BSF for the Srinagar encounter before it.

The BSF Director-General, Ajay Raj Sharma, admitted that "bureaucratic problems" were responsible for the delay. "Our headquarters only received the papers from Srinagar a short while back," he said, "and we want to be very careful about the paperwork, since we are, somewhat unusually, asking for the Ashok Chakra for some of our men. They will get the medals, even if a little bit late."

Medal recommendations received by the Home Ministry screening committee are forwarded to the Intelligence Bureau, which then submits a report on whether the cases are in fact legitimate. "In this case," an officer at the Intelligence Bureau's station in Srinagar told : "We'd anticipated medals would be granted, and had already kept the necessary papers ready so there would be no delay. Obviously, though, we can't vet a proposal we haven't been sent. If we get the papers tomorrow, it will take us just an hour to deal with them."

Inaction by the BSF bureaucrats on other medal recommendations has created peculiar situations. Three Jammu and Kashmir Police personnel, including the Srinagar Senior Superintendent of Police, Javed Geelani, were recommended for medals for their role in evacuating civilians from the Greenways Hotel, the site of a suicide-squad attack which claimed the life of Javed Shah, MLC, last year. Those medals have been approved, sources say.

The committee could not, however, approve the cases of BSF personnel who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the police, because their headquarters had not put up a file.

Nor is there word on the Rs. 20-lakh reward announced for the arrest or elimination of Khan.

Mr. Sharma had on at least two occasions announced that this reward would be paid, but BSF sources contacted by said it was yet to be disbursed to personnel on the ground. The Jammu and Kashmir Government released a separate, official reward of Rs. 2 lakhs — a sum which stands in stark contrast with the Rs. 1-crore price on the head of the forest brigand, Veerappan.

BSF field personnel are also piqued at the lack of interest Members of Parliament have shown in the affair. "Ghazi Baba tried to kill them," says one officer in the 61 Battalion, which led the operation, "so you would expect at least one or two MPs to have had the courtesy to congratulate us."

He contrasted the lack of interest for soldiers involved in the case with that shown personally by the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for the National Security Guard personnel killed and injured in the attack on the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

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