The Srinagar Fracas

Deepak Sinha

In an earlier piece in April, Open Season on the Olive Green, I had written at length about the issue of serving and retired military personnel getting the raw end of the stick, quite literally, from policemen and sundry other people. At that time, the incident of Punjab Police personnel beating up a serving Colonel and his son, was fresh on people’s minds. It unfortunately, continues to remain in the spotlight, as the Punjab Police drags its feet, despite judicial intervention at the highest level. Indeed, the wheels of justice in this country no longer grind slowly, for all practical purposes, they have ground to a halt.

On Kargil Divas, 26^th July, we were witness to another such confrontation, in which an Army Officer, Lt Col Ritesh Kumar Singh, was involved in a violent quarrel with four members of the ground staff of SpiceJet Airlines at Srinagar Airport. In a statement following the incident the Airlines alleged that “the incident took place when Mr. Singh was about to board a flight to Delhi. He was carrying cabin luggage that weighed twice the permissible limit and when the staff asked him to pay for the excess luggage, he allegedly refused and forcefully entered the aerobridge without completing the boarding process. Some staff members escorted Mr Singh back to the gate where he grew increasingly aggressive and assaulted four members of the ground staff.”

They went on to add that in the fracas “one employee fell unconscious on the floor but Mr. Singh continued kicking and hitting him. Another member suffered bleeding from the nose and mouth after receiving a forceful kick to the jaw while bending down to assist the colleague who had fainted. Additionally, he had also suffered a spinal fracture.” The Airline stated it had submitted CCTV footage of the incident to the police and placed the officer on the no-fly list. That footage was also shared online, obviously by someone on its staff, and showed the officer hitting one of the staff with a metal stand before it was taken away from him by a CISF personnel on duty there.

This clip went viral and mainstream media lost no time in putting it out in the public domain, without ofcourse bothering to check out the story with the officer involved. The Hindustan Times, for example, carried the headlines “Jaw kicked, object thrown: Video shows Army man’s murderous assault on SpiceJet staff at Srinagar Airport”. Incidentally, following the incident, the officer too had also lodged a police complaint alleging he was assaulted, provoked and forced to defend himself. An aspect that the mainstream media deliberately ignored in their reporting.

Surprisingly, even at this time, the Hindustan Times website continues to display its earlier reporting. This, despite new CCTV footage of the entire incident having emerged that suggests the SpiceJet version is not wholly accurate, having left out critical footage that now puts a completely different complexion on events and casts serious doubts on the Airline’s narrative. This footage shows the officer being pushed to the floor and assaulted by four employees of the airline prior to his retaliation, and indeed seems to bear out his version of events.

Fact of the matter is airline staff have no business acting aggressively, when confronted by a dissatisfied and angry passenger. Surely, by no stretch of imagination can that be SpiceJet’s standing operating procedure for such contingencies? In any case, even if the officer did barge through on to the aerobridge, as claimed, should it then not have been left to the CISF to handle? Why then would ground staff personnel intervene and pull him back, especially when they are fully aware he is a serving Army Officer and the aircraft is not going anywhere till the issue is resolved? Was their action punitive aimed at ensuring the officer would miss his flight, despite the fact he was proceeding on leave to deal with a family emergency and may well have been stressed?

We are still not fully cognisant of what actually occurred and it would be foolish at the present time to apportion blame, without the police investigation having been completed and all facts being made public. One can only hope that this investigation will be fair, and swiftly completed, bringing out the whole truth, with appropriate action being initiated by the concerned organisations against whoever is found blameworthy. Such occurrences are indeed unfortunate, as they tend to vitiate the atmosphere, which, given the security challenges that Jammu and Kashmir face can be taken advantage of by elements ill-disposed towards us.

Invariably, the causative factors leading to such incidents are related to either passenger dissatisfaction or noncompliance with existing rules and regulations. The breakdown of interaction between the airline staff and passengers usually tends to be restricted to heated exchanges before the situation is defused, either by the Airport authorities or the airline management.

That this incident escalated and led to violence before it was fully controlled suggests serious lapses on the part of the Airline management and those responsible for security, the Police/CISF elements deployed there. These lapses can be clearly observed from the footage available as neither the Airlines Duty Manager nor additional personnel of the CISF intervened in a timely manner to stop the situation from going out of control. That such an incident could occur in the security holding area suggests the concerned authorities were fast asleep. Clearly, airport security needs to be reviewed afresh and those responsible held to account.

Finally, repeated violent attacks on military personnel by non-military persons suggests that either respect for those in our Defence Forces has been greatly eroded or because people feel emboldened by the fact that our criminal justice system has collapsed and they will never be held to account. It is more likely to be the latter, because our military, as Operation Sindoor and the their response to the Uttarkhand disaster have shown, still continues to perform splendidly whatever be the challenge it faces. The perception that military personnel are easy targets for anti-social elements or the entititled is extremely dangerous, as there is bound to be a day that they will retaliate, not just with actions like “Boycott SpiceJet” that is presently trending, but in kind. That day is not far off , if things continue the way they are, and the results then are unlikely to be pretty.