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Saturday, May 08, 2004

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National

The 'tadka' game

By Praveen Swami

NEW DELHI, MAY 7. Officers in Jammu and Kashmir talk a lot about `tadka,' the spicy fried seasoning poured on to a bowl of dal. Most times, though, they are not discussing cuisine.

For the past several years, bad-apple elements of the forces operating through Jammu and Kashmir have inflated their operational successes by fabricating evidence of non-existent kills, much as their counterparts in Siachen have now been caught doing. `Tadka' has been a popular game for Army units which have underperformed, officers whose careers are on the line because of their lack of success — and for those simply greedy for the cash rewards counter-terrorist successes bring with them.

Just how the `tadka' game works is made evident from the official figures on the killings of terrorists in Poonch. In 1998, when the situation began to deteriorate sharply in the region, 114 terrorists were shot dead by the Indian forces. In 1999, the figure rose to 155. The next year, in part the result of a large influx of terrorists brought about by the dislocation of troops during the Kargil war, the killings went again, to 247. All this was roughly in line with State-level trends.

Then, in 2001, something distinctly odd happened. A total of 520 terrorists were claimed to have been killed by the Indian forces, over double the number recorded the previous year. By contrast, overall killings of terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir grew only a modest 17 per cent. Just as curiously, the killings of terrorists fell precipitously in 2002, to 352, and to 262 last year. In these years, however, the decline across Jammu and Kashmir was much lower — just 17.5 per cent between 2001 and 2002, and 16 per cent between 2002 and 2003.

So just what had happened in Poonch?

Privately, top military and police officials accept that the figures on terrorist kills were grossly overstated through the summer of 2001 until the spring of 2002. The fraud was at once ingenious and simple. As the Indian forces began to operate in remote areas on the Pir Panjal range, field commanders began to argue that they could not bring down the bodies to the nearest police station for burial. Instead, they took photographs of those killed and attached these to the First Information Reports lodged with the police, a mandatory formality.

Never, however, were the negatives of the photographs handed over. As time went by, and printouts of scanned images were accepted for the records, the tadka scam became even easier to perpetuate. In essence, the same photograph, stored on a hard disk, could be printed out and repeatedly used as evidence of kills in different places. Since there was no audit mechanism in place check the authenticity of the image produced when an FIR was lodged, the tadka scam went unchecked. It was only early in 2003 that a serious effort was made to curb the practice — one reason why killings in Poonch last year were so much lower than in the past.

A major reason why the Siachen fraud may have run successfully is the similar lack of an adequate audit mechanism there. Both the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing have the capability to monitor military transmissions from Siachen, and officers in the 102 Brigade carefully set up their fake fire engagements to ensure signals intelligence personnel would think a real battle was underway. However, videotape footage is not subject to any expert scrutiny — and, as the Siachen experience shows, is fairly easy to fake.

A final end to the tadka saga in Poonch came last year, when The Hindu 's sister publication, Frontline, blew the lid on its most flagrant example. The Army claims to have killed between 60 and 182 terrorists in the remote Hil Kaka area and to have unearthed underground bunkers and war-like stores, Frontline's investigation showed, were pure fiction. In fact, only 27 terrorists had been killed and weapons recoveries were minimal. In key senses, the expose itself was enabled by the fact that procedures for lodging FIRs had been tightened up, and flagrantly dishonest claims were no longer being entertained.

Elsewhere, however, the tadka has flourished, perhaps because no one has ever been punished for it. No heads rolled after the expose on the Hil Kaka fraud, and no one was held accountable for the 2000-2001 tadka killings in Poonch. This, in turn, is because most in the chain of command choose to turn a blind eye to tadka. Exaggerated claims of success mean medals, promotions and rewards for everyone, from the level of the company commander to senior Corps officials. From time to time, senior officials have sought to put an end to such fraud, but official interventions have in general been fitful and episodic.

Given that the Army's intensely competitive structure breeds a fierce competition for promotions, the tadka game will most certain resurface, unless the embarrassment caused by the Siachen revelations leads to a revision of procedures for audit and assessment.

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