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'When there is a knock on the door there is panic inside'

Mukhtar Ahmad in Nunar Ganderbal, Kashmir.

Some of them had .303 rifles slung over their shoulders, the others had lathis. All were youths, all wore ill-fitting police uniforms.

This is the new special police officers force, created to protect the Kashmiri Pandits who have stayed back in the Ganderbal and Kangan tehsils of Jammu and Kashmir after the Wandhama massacre.

Each house in the villages (Nunar, Chapper Gund, Manigam, Lar and Wussan) on the Srinagar-Ladakh national highway, all of which had, till January, a majority Pandit population, is now protected by a joint force of 20 SPOs and five policemen. The Pandits had refused the government offer to shift them to a security zone in Srinagar, preferring the threat of their own soil to the safety of an alien one.

"The deployment of the forces," claims Ganderbal police district Superintendent Mubark Ganasie, "has completely restored the confidence of Pandits."

Ganasie's claim, however, appears off the mark once you get down talking to the locals.

As you enter Bhushan Lal's house -- after seeking permission from the SPOs, of course! -- he and his wife come forward to greet you.

"This is really a new experience, this protected feeling," Lal smiles, "We can sleep in our homes. But..."

But?

"But I must tell you it has not restored our shattered confidence," he says.

Ramesh Kumar, Lal's only son, has already migrated to Jammu with his family. "Wandhama shattered him completely," says the father, "He would not stay back, even in a protected house..."

And he?

Well, Lal himself has qualms about security, even now. "I am a confused man today. We just cannot decide," he says, "The security of my family is most important... We have no protection when we go out to work on our fields."

Ramesh's migration has added to the family's insecurity. "When there is a knock on the door, there is panic inside," says Lal's wife, "We are scared of strangers, even SPOs."

It is for this reason that the authorities have taken care to appoint only local youths as SPOs. All had volunteered for the job.

Brij Nath, a Wassan resident, for his part, is not at all impressed by the SPOs. He says he had never faced any problem living there; the new arrangement has not made any difference. "Anyway, these SPOs are ill-equipped and not trained," he says.

Ganasei admits this is true; but the SPOs will be trained shortly. In any case, he says, there are four to five trained policemen at the head of each group.

"At least," sighs Nath's wife Kant, more optimistic than her husband, "now no stranger can walk into our house."

Kant had lost many of her close relatives in the Wandhama incident. Like many of the locals, she admits to being 'too confused' to make a decision: should they stick on here, entrusting their lives to these SPOs, or should they take up the government offer?

The SPOs, meanwhile, have had a positive effect on the employment scene of Ganderbal, which, incidentally, is Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah's constituency. Over 200 young men have got jobs as SPOs, on a monthly purse of Rs 1,500.

While in other parts of the valley the SPOs role is limited to protecting Pandits, in Ganderbal, they also carry out anti-militancy operations. The area is heavily infested by local and foreign militants, but the police are confident that the new arrangement would pave way for the return of Pandits.

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