Enacted Glory?

 

 

“What punishment do you accord to those who kill thousands brutally? These are not your everyday one-off murderers. These are individuals who revel in the slaughter of innocents; those who kill under the garb of religion and bastardise jihad are not just dangerous for the country but equally the scourge of the earth. Just as I feel, you too must feel that these murderers deserve only death – in the most murderous fashion…

You believe we kill them in fake encounters? Yes, I believe devils like these do not deserve life. Every jawan in the Army, including me, wishes that his bullet must pierce the chest of such beasts. We know that even a single terrorist will take many defenceless lives. The life of someone’s child or someone’s husband. We often live the enormity of such situations. Whenever a terrorist crosses our path, it becomes impossible to shut out the cries of widowed mothers and orphaned sisters and children. Then, if you had weapons, you’d feel the same rush of hot blood blaze through your veins – and the trigger blows fire. On several instances during encounters, innocent civilians too get trapped in the crossfire of our bullets; the terrorists are to blame for this too. They use passersby as covers, as scapegoats to make good their own rescue.

You sound like those human rights activists who argue that we have no right to punish these deathmongers? I beg to differ. Take the case of terrorists like Omar Sheikh, Maulana Masood Azhar and Mushtak Zargar who were released after the Kandahar hijack episode. Can you imagine after losing how many of our young men had we apprehended them. Had we given them ‘justice’ then itself, they wouldn’t then have been able to orchestrate massacres from an enemy country…

We break the law? We do. But somewhere I am also bound by the same duty towards my nation and my fellow citizens. Everything’s fair in war, and so it also is in our battle against terrorists and terrorism. We feel so, despite the knowledge that we may lose our jobs doing so, and may even have to spend years behind bars. Our families might come to harm. Investigations are already underway against several of our jawans and officers in related cases. Inspite of that, if we take the law in our hands, we do so purely for the country and its citizens. Was Lord Ram wrong in killing Ravana? Why do we celebrate Vijayadashami...?

As for our politicians, we’ve given up on them. Their refuge alone lets these beasts saunter happily in and out of jail. Justice has to be done, and someone has to be up to it...” BRASS TACKS

In a recent report by Human Rights Watch titled ‘‘Everyone Lives in Fear’’:Patterns of Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir, there were brought to light gross human rights violations in India-occupied Kashmir, by the Army and paramilitary. “It’s absurd that the world’s largest democracy... internationally recognised judiciary, has laws on its books that prevent members of its security forces from being prosecuted for human rights abuses,” stated Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.