Chargesheet in nagaland tragedy must be followed by quick goi army action focus also on naga talks

Chargesheet in nagaland tragedy must be followed by quick goi army action focus also on naga talks

The filing of a chargesheet by a Nagaland police SIT against 30 special forces personnel of 21 Para – charges include murder and criminal conspiracy – is a good first response to the tragically botched operation that killed six civilians in Nagaland’s Mon district. The onus is now on GoI and the army for further legal and disciplinary action. Parallelly, the army’s Court of Inquiry probe has given a second distinct judicial pathway for authorities to proceed. Prosecution sanction for the police chargesheet is needed from Centre’s department of military affairs under the AFSPA law. The Army Act gives the commanding officer discretion to decide whether accused personnel will be court martialled or be subjected to civilian law.

Because the incident had set off great churning in Naga society, decisions on which forum will try the accused mustn’t be delayed inordinately. Remember, mob violence after the tragedy had taken the lives of seven more civilians and one paratrooper. Civil society rightly denounced the draconian AFSPA as the villain because of the leeway it gives armed forces to fire on people. Standard operating protocols ratified by the Supreme Court to check AFSPA misuse have failed; these guardrails get flouted by errant officers or during crisis situations.

GoI responded to growing calls to repeal AFSPA by withdrawing it on March 31 from 15 police stations each in seven Nagaland and six Manipur districts, and entirely from 23 districts in Assam. But even more than piecemeal AFSPA withdrawals, a big win for the entire Northeast would be the conclusion of the Naga peace accord. As is evident, security forces aren’t confident they can curb illicit activities of insurgents in Nagaland and Manipur without AFSPA.

Only a binding political solution can demilitarise these two states and resolve accompanying law and order problems like extortion, gun violence and narcotics smuggling. With assembly elections due next year in Nagaland, a peace deal, especially including the largest outfit NSCN(IM), would give the governing coalition of NDPP and BJP a political victory. More importantly, citizens, weary of decades of conflict and AFSPA imposition, will get to fully enjoy constitutional freedoms and economic opportunities available to the rest of India.