Abid Bashir
Srinagar (NVI): Suicides and fratricides are not uncommon among CRPF and Army personnel deployed in Kashmir. Stress, daily threat of violence, worries for home and domestic issues, and long duty hours are pushing personnel to the brink.
The Covid-19 pandemic has further made their jobs more challenging, as they have to go beyond the call of duty now and ensure social distancing as well as security in the Union Territory. Corona is the invisible enemy they are coping with, and the risk of getting infected with the deadly virus bothers many.
Yesterday, two CRPF personnel committed suicide in the UT by shooting themselves dead with their service rifles. One of them left a suicide note behind that read: “I am afraid, I may have Corona.”
Concerned over the issue, the top brass of the security grid has stepped up efforts to prevent such incidents among their men.
To recall, leave applications of all security forces’ personnel– CRPF, Police as well as Army — were canceled on March 20, to deal with the pandemic in the Union Territory.
Speaking to NVI on the issue, Special Director General of CRPF in Kashmir, Zulfikar Hassan said, “Suicides among our men are very unfortunate. We will act but will first try to find out the exact reason for suicides.”
CRPF spokesman in Srinagar, Pankaj Singh didn’t shy away from saying that due to the lockdown, there is an increased amount of tension among the men on the ground. “This is a serious issue and a challenge for us. We need to fine-tune our daily briefings, counseling sessions and de-stressing measures.”
A CRPF commandant told NVI that due to Covid-19 outbreak, recreational activities are not taking place which is also a major source of tension among the men. “At this juncture, suicidal tendencies are a big worry for us,” he said.
“After performing day-long duties on roads, then facing law and order and at the same time taking part in anti-militancy operations is not that easy,” he added.
Not just the CRPF, but Police is also worried about its men despite the fact that 95 per cent of its workforce belong to J&K districts only.
“We give constant briefings to our boys with the sole aim of increasing their morale so that they keep away with any negative thoughts. Besides morning and evening briefings, we keep on passing direction to them throughout the day on wireless sets and also through their concerned officers to stay calm, stay alert as they are serving for the humanity,” a senior police officer in Srinagar said.
In 2019, the guidelines framed by a board of officers of psychiatrists, which include regular psychiatric evaluation, improving the grievance redressal mechanism, were handed over to the paramilitary forces by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs amid directions for the strict implementation of the same.
According to the data shared by the Central Government in Rajya Sabha in 2018, 228 CRPF jawans lost their lives due to suicides between 2010 to 2017 across the nation.
A CRPF official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that suicides among the forces are “noiseless self-executions.”
“Though these deaths aren’t yet alarming but that doesn’t mean these aren’t troublesome,” he said.
Experts and counsellors working towards addressing the psycho-social problems among the forces deployed in Kashmir say that stress, separation from families, long duty hours and poor command and control structures work as contributing factors for more than 70 per cent of deaths that have taken place since 2001.
In 2018, taking serious note of the suicides among the CRPF personnel in Kashmir, the then Director-General of CRPF, RR Bhatnagar, now advisor to LG Jammu and Kashmir, had launched a maiden project to ascertain “jawans’ mental health”.
Bhatnagar had said that he had passed directions and “made it a point that every suicide case in the force is thoroughly investigated.”
“This is to see that if there were certain signals that the person who committed suicide was giving and if yes, were they picked up and responded to or not?”
Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) had conducted a study in 2004 into the factors causing stress while in 2012, Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad also did a similar study for BSF and CRPF. Some of the reasons for committing suicide by police personnel cited in these studies were personal problems, illness and other family circumstances.
