Srinagar’ :Jammu and Kashmir’s Director General Police (DGP) RR Swain Saturday said that since guns have a 30 long history in the region, it will take time to silence the last gun.

“Gun has a 30-year-long history in J&K and it will take time to silence the last gun…,” DGP Swain told reporters on the side-lines of a public darbar held at Police Headquarters in Srinagar.
The DGP said that policing is a very tough job and police are incomplete without public support. “We have to ensure that the genuine party gets justice and for that, we have to listen to both parties carefully while carrying out the investigations,” he said, adding, “it is not like that after proving the theft case, we would let the thief go.”

He said while treading the tough path, police are fast emerging as the most professional force in J&K. “Even though mistakes do happen. In our journey of policing, we keep on rectifying the mistakes,” the DGP said.

About the stone pelting in Kashmir, the J&K police chief said that it has come to zero. “High Court has stated that stone pelting is an act of terrorism. Here, stone pelting was never connected or linked with sadak, pani, bijli and in fact it created a law and order situation on roads,” he said. “Today, no civilian injuries or deaths and for that matter no security forces personnel got injured or killed in stone pelting in Kashmir.”

With stone pelting vanishing completely, tourism and trade is flourishing, schools and colleges functioning normally while the income of families has improved and so has their lives.

Asked what policy was the police adopting for the people who have committed mistakes in the past like taking part in stone pelting and now living a peaceful life, he said: “Doors of police are not closed for the people who have committed mistakes once or twice in the past but are living normal life. These cases have come to fore during the public darbar including the cases where people have been selected for government jobs but are awaiting security clearance. Passport clearance cases are also before us….”

DGP Swain said that police has adopted two pronged approach for such cases— to look for aggravating factors and mitigating factors—if a person has committed a mistake once and then committed it again, police has to go harsh but under mitigating factors, if a person has committed mistake once and quit it forever, a different approach is adopted. “Our primary aim is to find ways and means to end of violence. Factors responsible for violence have been tackled in a way that they don’t exist anymore.”

On Public darbars, he said police family is spread over 1.40lakh force and cases of different natures come to fore. “Darbars have come from a combination of internal grievance redressal systems given a huge number of family members (policemen). SRO related cases also come to me and then comes to cases related to common people which are also connected with police by one or the other way,” the DGP said—(KNO)

Reader correspondent