When a reckless act is committed leading to scores of deaths and injuries, an apology means little and could even be an added provocation. But the government cannot remain silent after a massacre of the kind that took place in Nagaland’s Mon district, bordering Myanmar. Both the Indian Army and Union Home Minister Amit Shah were quick to come up with statements expressing their grief and announcing a Court of Inquiry as also a probe by a special investigating team of the Nagaland government, respectively. Compensations would be announced but the amounts could be no more than a few lakhs to each affected family as the dead and the maimed were poor labourers who worked in coal mines and the establishment treats them lightly. Sadly, they were sitting ducks – on their journey back home in a pick-up van from the mine.
From the looks of it, the army exceeded its brief. The job of the army personnel on deployment there was to round-up and arrest insurgents following a tip-off that men of the NSCN-K, a proscribed separatist outfit, were testing the ground there. Security forces open fire when they are challenged. The unarmed labourers were unlikely to throw a challenge. These are matters that will be investigated and action taken. Also, mob violence followed. Many of the injured taken to hospitals in Assam died too and so did a soldier. Left to the police and its investigation machinery, across states, people have less faith. For, the policing system has been rubbished increasingly by the politicians in power. There are more corrupt elements in the police force today than in the public realm. One can only hope the army with its stronger systems might do the probe in a more serious manner, fix the guilty and mete out exemplary punishment if there was wrong-doing.
The entire North-East is a special case. The process of integration with the national mainstream has been a work in progress. Over the past several years, the positive vibes are there for all to see. At the same time, the region remains highly sensitive also because of the tendency among tribes for self-assertion, a scenario complicated by long years of low-paced development. The army, the police and other security forces engaged in the region are expected to exercise maximum restraint in the discharge of their responsibilities. At the same time, only an impartial inquiry would bring out the facts as to what went wrong and if there was any justification for the firing on the part of the soldiers.
