SRINAGAR — Over million phones are tapped by Union Home Ministry in Kashmir, an opinion piece in The Hindu said Thursday.
Vasundhara Sirnate, the chief coordinator of research at The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, wrote: “An Intelligence Bureau official stationed in Kashmir told me that they were tapping 10 lakh phones in Kashmir alone by 2014.”
The article titled ‘The soldier as state actor’ moans how governance has “increasingly come to be seen through the lens of the counterinsurgency paradigm” and how the “coercive arm of the state” has not achieved conditions under which civilian government can run.
“The landscape is dotted with armed soldiers and the police; civilian movement is filtered and controlled in shopping districts and government offices, curfews and crackdowns are imposed at the slightest suggestion of dissent, and phone tapping is common,” the article, carried on the opinion pages of The Hindu, says.
Phone tapping is not a new phenomenon in Kashmir where India is running one of the world’s largest counter-insurgency operation that is in its 25th year, resulting in killings of over 70,000 persons with 8000 victims of enforced disappearances, according to independent rights groups.
In 2011, a news channel reported that the region’s chief minister Omar Abdullah had ordered phone tapping of over 100 persons after the death of his party worker, Haji Yousuf, which created a political scandal in the region.
The government had however denied the report, “It is a baseless and mischievous report. Government has not issued any such orders,” the state home secretary, BR Sharma, told reporters.
In 2013, the issue of phone tapping resurfaced when it was revealed that Omar Abdullah`s phone was tapped by army`s intelligence unit during former Indian Army chief General VK Singh`s tenure.
“If the Chief Minister`s phone was tapped, who authorised it…And if it was tapped, who was hearing the conversation…It is breach of national security,” National Conference chief for Jammu province and Omar’s close friend, Devender Singh Rana, told reporters.
In April 2010, DNA reported that phone tapping has become a necessity to keep a check on anti-nationals. “Phone-tapping might have created a storm in parliament, ruffling many a political feather in the country. But it is a standard practice in J&K to nail anti-national elements. From separatists to ordinary criminals, every suspect’s phone is tapped using hi-tech gadgets,” the DNA reported.
–Authint Mail
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