Verma panel’s AFSPA remark imbalanced

The report of Justice Verma Committee on the ghastly Delhi gangrape case is out. Even a cursory perusal of the document takes the reader into the heart of darkness through the entrails of the medieval horror that reflects the Indian societal mindset in the 21st century. The committee was established as a crash action response to an abominable crime with the charter to “…look into possible amendments of the criminal law to provide for quicker trial and enhanced punishment for criminals committing sexual assault of extreme nature against women”.
During the course of their undoubtedly painstaking investigation, the members of the committee interacted with the civil society comprising a range of individuals and civil rights organisations. The final report was derived from inputs conveyed by activists, civil liberties groups and women’s organisations, especially from the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir where popular sentiments and mindset have always been traditionally arrayed against the security forces. The report draws the armed forces into its ambit scorching their alleged misuse of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act when deployed to aid civil authority.
While all sections of the public are entitled to their own opinions, it would have been more in the fitness and fairness of things if the committee had also given an opportunity to the security forces to present their own case before it, preferably in person. In the absence of such an interaction, the end result has turned visibly imbalanced and one-sided.
This is partly also because the committee did not appear to be adequately aware about the obverse side of the situation prevailing in the zones of internal conflict, particularly in respect of terror and connected crimes against women amongst the local population by the hostiles themselves. Hostiles operating against the security forces contribute substantially to the general environment of terror through a systematic campaign of murder and criminal intimidation. Keeping the overall situation in mind, the committee has hopefully satisfied itself about the credibility and reliability of some of the more critical statements against the security forces which have been placed before it, many of which would definitely have been motivated by hostile propaganda. The veracity of these reports can never be satisfactorily established.
However, notwithstanding the foregoing, the Indian Army and paramilitary forces must accept report of the committee in good faith. They should consider it as a stricture against themselves and take corrective action wherever necessary, especially in respect of alleged misuse of the AFSPA when operating in aid to civil authority during counter-militancy operations, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast, the two most deeply estranged regions in the country.
Counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and counter-militancy have always been regarded as amongst the most thankless and disagreeable tasks that the Army is called upon to perform. It is a task with no glory and with very little honour. No regular Army — no matter how disciplined and restrained it is — will succeed in keeping itself totally free from controversy in a generally hostile public environment. The Indian Army just does not tolerate misbehaviour by troops with the civilian population, an aspect of civil-military relations that is constantly reiterated and strictly implemented.
However, by the nature of their task, soldiers do become soft targets for slander and innuendo by a hostile press. But the country can be proud of the record of the Indian Army in this respect, which remains amongst the best in the world even under the most trying of circumstances.
The committee has harshly castigated the security forces for deliberate misuse of the AFSPA to shield guilty personnel from legal prosecution for alleged crimes against civil population. Yet, strangely enough, a perusal of media reports does not seem to indicate that the committee has interacted adequately on this issue with the military authorities.
Discipline has always been the traditional bedrock of the Indian Army. Unit commanders know that they are responsible at all times for the conduct and behaviour of the men under their command. Those familiar with the service and its ethos are well aware that this is the basic principle and has always been one of the strengths of the service. In the Army, it has always been the direct responsibility of a commanding officer to ensure that troops under his command maintain proper discipline and conduct themselves accordingly. It is ironic that the committee should have expounded at length on an aspect already strongly enforced in the service environment, where “command responsibility” as enunciated by the committee has always been a basic philosophy of command.
The Indian Army has always considered itself as a class apart in terms of performance and effectiveness, backed up and proven by its sustained performance demonstrated in a variety of operational environments including counter-insurgency and its generic inclusion under the blanket designation of “the security forces” has always been an irritant.
Chapter Five of the report is entirely focused on “offences against women in border areas/conflict zones” and in many senses can be taken to constitute the heart of the entire document. The chapter recommends the introduction of an additional Section 376F as a superpunitive provision to the Indian Penal Code for offences against women committed by security forces with particular reference to Kashmir, the Northeast, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. However, it seems that before finalising its report, the Verma committee did not invite the Indian Army to present its case or interact with them in any meaningful or substantial manner. This may have been due to constraints and compulsions of a time-bound report. Nevertheless it is unfortunate because of the overall implications of the report for the professional reputation of the Indian Army, one of the few world-class institutions the country can boast of.

The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament