Arun Joshi
The 1991 batch IPS officer Rashmi Ranjan Swain, son of the soil of Odisha, will assume charge of new Director General of Police of Jammu and Kashmir on November 1, at the time when the union territory is passing through most challenging times – to preserve all what has been achieved so far and how to translate it into permanent peace in this land.
Swain, special DGP ( CID) J&K, according to an order of the Ministry of Home Affairs issued on Friday, has been appointed as the Director General of Police, J&K with effect from November 1, He will continue to hold the charge of the DG ( CID) . He will be succeeding Dilbag Singh will be retiring on October 31st after serving as police chief of J&K for a little over five years.
Jammu and Kashmir police, over the last few years, has assumed frontline role against terrorism. It has recorded so many successes against terrorists and their networks. In this concerted campaign against terrorism in Kashmir, a new investigating agency – State Investigating Agency ( SIA) headed by Swain , played a critical role investigating and demolishing the terror networks. Many terrorists were arrested and their networks smashed by the SIA.
Swain hails from Civil Colony area of Rourkela, Odisha.
Swain joined duties at a time when the militancy in Kashmir was at its peak – Pakistan was recruiting the gullible youth into terrorism, and training them at the terror training camps which were spread all across Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, and mainland Pakistan. The terror network had created attractions for the youth, in which “ dignity, wealth and women “ were to be delivered through guns apart from achieving their ideological and political objectives That as the time when thousands of bullets were fired across the Valley, and the terrorists had developed their support network all over. The guns were worshipped in the class and the gunmen hailed as “ heroes”.
This era was also where the J&K police were facing crisis of credibility, and this had thickened after the April 1993 police mutiny. The trust was eroding. It took leaders like Swain, and his contemporaries, to instill confidence in the force and prepare it for anti-terrorism operations from scratch. As a result of the leadership of this kind, other wings of the security forces, including army, BSF and other central paramilitary forces realized that J&K police was quintessential to decimate terrorism in Kashmir.
As CID head, Swain presided over cracking of so many long pending terrorism cases, and one of the most famous was tracking and putting behind the remaining culprits in the assassination of Mirwaiz Moulvi Mohammad Farooq, who was shot dead by Hizb-ul-Mujahadeen militants in his residence in Nageen area of Srinagar on May 21, 1990. Through the cracking of this case, Swain and his team had delivered a firm message that n0 matter where the terrorists seek to hide , they would be caught sooner or later and face the legal action.
At this point in time, heading J&K police, is full of challenges. Swain is known in the police force and among his contemporaries across the country, the man who loves taking on and overcoming challenges. This is the time when the peace gained so far is to be preserved and furthered. This is not only to maintain original ethos of peaceful co-existence and also to deepen the idea of India in the minds of people of Kashmir . These are the next level challenges, and the J&K has pinned hopes on new DGP RR Swain. He has got a platform in which he played a role as a leading member of the team, and now he has to play the role of team leader when. J&K is passing through era of transformation of its bitter past to new opportunities.
(Arun Joshi is author of “Eyewitness Kashmir; Teetering on Nuclear War and senior journalist based in Jammu and Kashmir, writes on South Asian affairs)
Disclaimer: This is the personal opinion of the author. The views expressed in this write-up have nothing to do with www.prameyanews.com.
