Early Times Report
Srinagar, July 17: Even as the Jammu and Kashmir Police is already under scanner for failing to maintain law and order in the wake of killing of Hizb commander, Burhan Muzaffar Wani, one of the most efficient former Director General of Police (DGP), KPS Gill has also taken a dig at the government.
Gill, who served twice as DGP for Punjab, where he is credited with having brought the Punjab insurgency under control, said it was a total failure on the part of government for having failed to manage turmoil erupting in the wake of Burhan's killing on July 8. The Valley continues to be on the edge since.
The former top cop said though security forces acted with restraint to tackle the street protests, the government and the intelligence agencies failed in the preparedness to tackle the aftermath of Burhan's killing.
"The agitation itself was both predictable and preventable, but there were errors of assessment, both of scale and location. This suggests a very high order of the failure of intelligence - particular in view of the fact that there had been a massive media build-up on Burhan Wani," Gill has said in an analysis.
The former DGP said the government should have kept Burhan's killing a secret till security arrangements were put in place to tackle the situation.
"In any event, once Wani was killed, there was reason to withhold details, at least till adequate security arrangements had been made to contain what should have been predictable fallout in the Valley, where street violence has been a recurrent phenomenon," Gill said.
He said it was quite expected that Pakistan would try to incite violence. "That said, it is abundantly clear that, while Wani's death created some natural sympathy, the escalation of street violence was substantially orchestrated and was clearly linked to provocations from Pakistan - not only from the terrorist leadership, but also directly from the Army command and from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif," he said.
The state government has come under severe criticism for failing to tackle the situation, which resulted killing of at least 43 persons and injuries to hundreds of persons including security forces in the last nine days of violence.
Security analysts believe that if situation could be kept under control after the hanging of Parliament attack convict Muhammad Afzal Guru on February 9, 2013, why the state government failed this time.
As already reported by Early Times, the government is headed for reshuffle in the police top brass while some heads are set to roll. |
