Editorial Board Contents - Bureau of Police Research and ...

social gatherings, and the vibrant cultural life ofShillong, amidst occasional visits to spots likeCherapunjee, regarded as the wettest place onearth. This tenure also afforded the much neededopportunity to work in close coordination andcooperation with, not only the State Police/administration, but also with other CentralOrganisations, be they the Armed Forces, diversepara military forces or sister intelligence agencies.My exposure to the North-East was to come invery handy later, particularly in the matter ofpeace dialogues with the Nagas, Bodos and suchother groups, since many of their leaders hadbeen educated at Shillong.My return to lB Headquarters in 1976 witnesseda fragile environment, marked by instabilitiesof different kind amidst the imposition ofEmergency in the country. All these problemskept the I.B. and its officers more than busy andoverworked, but nonetheless imparted themwith once in a lifetime experience. Believe itor not, for almost two years, it was 24×7 callof duty. Another nightmarish experience for mewas the coverage and reporting of the Policeagitations of 1979, which erupted in one Stateafter another, and in different organisations,including their reverberations in the I.B. itself.However, I do cherish this turbulent periodfor an entirely different reason. One of the twoyoung and energetic IPS officers inducted intothe lB and assigned to assist me, was NehchalSandhu, presently the DIB, while the other wasKoshy Koshy, who retired as Director General,BPR&D — for both of them, it was the proverbial‘Baptism by Fire’.In late 1983, on being interviewed personallyby Mr. R.N. Kao (then Security Advisor to thePrime Minister) and found suitable, I moved onas head of SIB, J&K — a tough but scintillatingassignment, that was to last a good four years.SIB, J&K, covering the diverse regions of Kashmir,Jammu and Ladakh, is traditionally regardedas the toughest professional theatre, with itsmyriad concerns and issues, with a blend ofdomestic, national, trans-border and internationaldimensions, marked by an extremely sensitiveand delicate polity. Here, even seemingly trivialissues were prone to flaring up in no time, andas such, the requirements of advance preventiveintelligence were perhaps nowhere greater thanin J&K. On the other hand, was the definite charmof having visited numerous famous places like theHazratbal Shrine, Dal Lake, Gulmarg, Pahalgam,Amarnath, Vaishno Devi, Drass, Zojilla Pass,Kargil, Leh and surrounding Buddhist monasteries,Ponggong Lake, Chushul and above all, literally,the Khardungla Pass (over 19000 feet in altitude).Equally cherished is my personal associationand acquaintance with Governors, B.K. Nehruand Jagmohan, political stalwarts like FarooqAbdullah, Mufti Mohammad Syed, Maulvi IftikharHusain Ansari, Chief Secretary Mir Nasrullah,DGP, Peer Ghulam Hasan Shah, the ‘thinkingGeneral’ M.L. Chibber of Northern Command,and of course, Justice A.S. Anand, who rose tobecome the Chief Justice of India. These namesI have mentioned, just to focus on the extremefinesse and knowledge that a senior lB officerrequires in order to meaningfully interact withsuch bigwigs on a sustained basis. In fact, J&K is apolishing stone that grinds, chisels and fine tunesone’s professional persona, thereby, converting agenerally ‘good’ officer into an ‘outstanding’ one.No wonder today, I understand, there is a waitinglist of lB officers at junior and middle levels alike,volunteering to serve in J&K. As a by productof my posting in J&K, our daughter acquiredproficiency in Urdu language, which she retainstill date, while her mother added a B'Ed degreeof Kashmir University as a suffix to her M.A.(Economics), from Lucknow University.My return to Delhi presented me with severalopportunities to further widen the sweepof my professional expertise. This includedparticipation, during 1988, in the 11 monthlong course at the prestigious National DefenceCollege, in the company of selected officersfrom the Indian Army, Navy, Airforce and CivilServices, besides those from more than a dozenforeign countries including USA, UK, Russia,South Korea and Australia. A unique opportunityto have a closer look at various facets of policingand law-enforcement, and problems connectedthereto came my way in 1991, while acting asthe Secretary of the Annual Conference of theDGPs of States and CPOs. The next decade wasspent on acquiring expertise on a plethora oftopics like socio-ethnic conflicts, Labour, Kisanand Student Movements, Religious and Regionalissues, Human Rights, Security (Departmental,Industrial, Civil Aviation, Communications),84The Indian Police Journal, October - December, 2012, Special Issue