Once, a decade ago actually, an additional District Magistrate (ADM) was so reluctant to sign a Sec 144 CRPC curfew after a mishandling of L/O situation by police officers, I asked him why; he said: 'Imposing of indefinite curfew is anti-human. It deprives the rights and liberty of the majority of citizens who had nothing to do with the prevailing situation'. That MCS officer (ADM) was the father of yours truly; adding that a curfew should always be used as the last option. He also said that as a senior civil or police officer, all avenues have to be considered by using past experiences before imposing a curfew or blank-firing order by being physically present to measure the gravity of the situation personally first hand. Wireless radio messages and telephonic informations are often misleading and mentally unreliable. One need to be absolutely sure of what he is going to do and any official observation should be realistically credible.

For example, the recent conclusion made by the MHRC, Thoubal SP and DC regarding the identities of the murderers of Pastor Jamkholet Khongsai was shocking. The official report of that low-level inquiry revealed that the good old pastor was shot dead out of hand by personnel of the Army's 21 Paratroopers (SF) Bn, instead of AR personnel. The big question is or was that how possibly on earth could they concur with the blatant disinformation dished out by the AR authorities. Yes, indeed, one can hide a person or two, but no one can hide an entire army battalion (Bn) with 500-700 men; besides there is no non-infantry Bn attached to either the 44th or 59th Mountain Brigade (Mtn Bde) stationed within Thoubal district or for that matter in the entire valley area.

So, whom were they (SP and DC) talking to? The fact that they had the testimonies of some villagers showed that they were not doing their entrusted job properly and had never committed themselves to the task seriously. How could those villagers, mostly illiterate, who could not have the knowledge to differentiate between the Army and AR personnel by their battle-dresses have the expertise to confirm the identities of the army's SF paratroopers? Paratroopers seldom search for a 60 year-old pastor just to kill and bury him in broad daylight, unless they mistook Thoubal area as Burmese territory. But then India is not at war with Burma which would allow special forces paratroopers to operate behind the enemy line in which case the enemy's citizens like Pastor Jamkholet could be regarded as 'hostile elements'. An army's (57th) Mountain Division does not include a full strength parachute regiment. Out of the 5 (five) existing battalions of the Parachute Regt only two i.e. 3rd and 4th Bns, have so far been converted into Special Forces Paratroopers Bns, an additional five more Bns of Para-SF will be raised, three of which will be designated as Para-SF Airborne Bns like that of the US Airborne Div. (Apart from wearing light green battle-dress of US Rangers, the elite commando forces will be deployed behind the enemy lines to deal with foreign-based militants or in any covert operations in times of war. They will be equipped with the Israelis 5.56 mm TAR-21 Tavor assault rifles (a miniature M-16), Minimi or Negev LMGs and Dragunov sniper rifles and special underwater rifle. Night-vision goggles and thermal-imaging equipments have already been widely used by para-commandos).

Well, what about the field intelligence gathering system and methods of extraction? The extremely crude methods used by the police and military officers for urgent extraction of the so-called 'Valuable information' by means of physical and mentally ruthless intimidations and tortures would have chilled the hearts of Attila the HUN and Reinhard 'the Hangman' Heydrich, the chief of Hitler's Gestapo. It is worth mentioning that the Heydrick (pr' dri-K), as ruthless Governor of occupied Czechoslovakia, was assassinated at a small town called Lidice (pr. Li-Dich) in 1942, by British commando-trained Czech parachutists in an audacious day light ambush code named 'Operation Daybreak' which later was made into a Hollywood box office hit film of the same name. The film 'Operation Daybreak' was temporarily banned in Manipur in the mid-80s when an UG outfit used the MO in a failed attempt to eliminate an over-estimated and an arrogant police officer right within Imphal proper. Well, that's Manipur for all and sundries; with power and authority without responsibility, ala the British Raj.

Local citizens/villagers do not deserve this unholy and diabolical victimization. Simply squeezing out a drop or two questionable, if not unreliable, information under extreme duress from suspected UG militants by brutal torturing or medieval age inquisition procedures must have to be promptly done away with. Here now is the age of space exploration, not the age of Iron Maidens (spiked coffins). Since the notorious Genheim Stats Polizei (Gestapo) always resorted to dark age barbaric methods of information's extraction in near literal sense, the assassination plot of Gestapo chief Rein-hard 'the Hangman' Heydrick was meaningfully named 'Operation Daybreak' to signify the end of Heydrick's dark age style of terror policing and the beginning of a bright new future - thus the term 'Daybreak'. Though, needless to say, Reichfiihrer Hein-rich Himmler's Waffen-Schultz Staffeln (SS) and its SS Panzer Armee summarily executed all the made population of Lidice and razed the town to rubbles in single day; and even the churches and their priests were not spared, just to set an example.

During the height of World War II, Adolf Hitler decreed that for every single SS or Gestapo personnel killed by the partisans/UGs, five prisoners or hostile civilians in occupied areas were to be executed in public, the ratio was then raised to 7:1 and later on increased once again to 10:1. Now, do we have the Third Reich's Aryan superiority mental attitude here around? In occupied-France (1940-44), the Gestapo devised a plan to trap the British SAS agents and the menacing partisans by imposing certain restriction in each and every town's pubs, restaurants, shops etc. So, if any person ordered a particular brand of wine or tried to buy a certain commodity on a wrong day of the week, then God helped the customer; for he would have a lot of talking to do in a barbaric bone-breaking business after which he would be strung up on the wall with piano wire.

Here in present day Manipur, blind-folded, hog-tied and battered suspects or captured UG militants would vaguely answer any question during the course of intense physical interrogation in order to ease the miserable pain and agony. More often than not, these forced and extracted answers/information are bereft of truth and precision, therefore dangerously unreliable. Surely, there must be a more civilized and professional method to extract non-contradictory information from suspected militants. Brutal torturing tends to disorient and disrupt the thinking power of all individuals. No wonder many residences and offices have been raided by SP personnel which at times resulted in extreme embarrassment, undue harassment and worse still - they led to unwarranted detentions/abductions with fatal consequences: "all based on specific information".

The most serious problem which has never been addressed officially in over two decades of CI Ops is the fact that extracted information wringed out off suspected militants have not been professionally analyzed with other reliable information filed by different units of both police and other armed forces officers. All credibly sound information need to be classified accordingly to the reliability of the nature of the information and their sources. No credible information should be regarded as inconsequent or unimportant, nor should one be treated as too big. And no extracted or intelligence reports should be filed off without proper analyses by experts who should be 'polished' and 'authenticated' before being classified. Since classified information are used as reference by all newly arrived units or transferred police officers. In such scenario, all names and addresses of suspect UG militants or sympathizers causally filed in by some irresponsible and clueless police or army /AR officers previously are taken by new officers as real and authentically classified information. This led to the death of two persons i.e. Pastor Jamkholet and Th. Manorama which is now a part of the darkest side Manipur's CI Ops history. A history that will change the course of the history of India's India.

(Courtesy: The Sangai Express)