Cops used 461 bullets, 4k tear gas shells to quell Delhi riots
NEW DELHI: Policemen fired at least 461 bullets in the air and used nearly 4,000 tear gas shells to quell the Hindu-muslim clashes that erupted in parts of northeast Delhi a year ago, according to Delhi police’s report on the riots.
The numbers of bullets fired and tear gas shells used were the highest in recent years, several mid-level police officers said. To be sure, while tear gas is commonly used to quell protests, instances of police resorting to aerial firing are not common. “Before the riots, while police may have used hundreds of tear gas shells during violent demonstrations such as the violence outside Jamia Millia Islamia during the anti-citizenship Amendment Act protests, police in Delhi hardly have to resort to aerial firing. It happens only once in a while and in a few cases,” said an officer who did not wish to be identified.
At least 53 persons died while 581 others were injured when riots broke out in northeast Delhi between February 23 and 27 last year. The analysis on the use of force by police also mentions that “police did not use excessive force despite extreme provocation, with the first casualty in the riots being a policeman”.
Police have said that while rioters carried pistols and other types of weapons, all their officers fired only aerially. “...However, if police had resorted to direct fire, to disperse the protestors, the casualties would have been enormous and could have further fuelled the riots. The police used tear gas, lathi charge and aerial firing to control the crowd. The force used was neither excessive nor less but was commensurate to the demands of the situation,” the report reads. Tear gas and lathi charge are the first steps used by police in handling riots.
Of the 53 people who died, postmortem reports later revealed that at least 13 of them had died of gunshot wounds. One of the defining images of the riots was that of a northeast Delhi resident, later identified as Shah Rukh Pathan, holding a pistol, also pointing it at a police officer, in the middle of the violence. Police investigations revealed that many rioters bought weapons from parts of western Uttar Pradesh before the riots began. In Shah Rukh’s case, the pistol he used (later recovered) was bought from Munger, Bihar. He bought it from an employee of an illegal gun factory in Munger.
According to the police report, the highest number of bullets fired and tear gas shells used were in the first 36 hours of the violence. It mentioned that before 2020, the 1992 riots in northeast Delhi were concentrated in areas under three police stations, while in 2020 the violence was spread across 12 police stations and two districts: northeast and Shahdara.
Police mentioned that most of the casualties last year were reported in the interior areas north of Wazirabad Road, which had no previous history of communal riots. The mobs, according to the report, gathered in large numbers at many places simultaneously and when they were controlled or dispersed from one place, they continued rioting at the other places. “The intensity and scale of violence can be gauged from the fact that 4,458 PCR calls were received on February 24, 2020 and 9,308 calls the following day,” it said.
As an attempt to restore calm during and after the riots, police records show that between February 22 and March 21, 2020, a total of 471 peace committee meetings were held in the area, many of which were chaired by L-G Anil Baijal and police commissioner SN Shrivastava. anipore may feel bad. But I don’t want to hurt them. If I can manage (to contest from both constituencies) it is okay. But I will contest from Nandigram,” she had said at the rally.
Bhawanipore, in south Kolkata, is Banerjee’s home turf. On Friday, she announced that veteran party leader and state power minister Sovandeb Chatterjee will be contesting from Bhawanipore.
This will be for the first time that Banerjee will be in the poll fray from Nandigram constituency represented by Suvendu Adhikari in 2016 and another TMC candidate in 2011. Though Adhikari, who crossed over to the BJP in December, has time and again expressed his desire to take on his former boss directly in Nandigram, the saffron party leadership is yet to a take a decision on it.
Banerjee and Adhikari were prominent figures of the antiland acquisition movement in Nandigram in 2007 that ultimately catapulted the firebrand Trinamool Congress supremo to power in West Bengal in 2011, ending the 34-year-old rule of the Left Front.
The BJP had won 18 Lok Sabha seats in last Parliamentary poll out of total 42 constituencies in Bengal, only four less than TMC’S tally of 22.
“This is a smiley election,” the chief minister quipped, suggesting that winning over the BJP will be a breeze for her party.
The list declared by Banerjee comprises several new faces and includes actors and directors from West Bengal’s film industry (known as Tollywood), sportspersons, singers, former Indian Police Service (IPS) officers, doctors and professors, among others. The list includes 50 women candidates.
Prominent ministers — Partha Chatterjee, Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee — have been retained from their traditional seats.
“Several existing MLAS, ministers and party leaders could not be given tickets. We had to come up with a mix-and-match of old-timers and young ones. Also, names of those who are above 80 have been dropped because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some MLAS are ailing. We will try to include all these names in the state legislative council,” Banerjee said.
State finance minister Amit
Mitra won’t be contesting elections due to poor health, the TMC supremo said. Purnendu Bose is another elderly minister missing from the TMC list of candidates and so is veteran legislator Jatu Lahiri from Sibpur.
Party leaders aware of the development said that Banerjee stressed on the winnability and clean image of a candidate while choosing the names. The Opposition, particularly the BJP, has targeted the TMC on the corruption.
She also said that while 68 seats are reserved for Scheduled Caste (SC) candidates, she has fielded around 79 such candidates. While 16 are reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST), she has decided to field 17 ST candidates.
This is important because about 23.5% of the state’s population belongs to SC communities and 5.8% to STS. About 7% of the state’s population belongs to the OBCS, according to state government data.
The chief minister also thanked regional parties such as the Nationalist Congress Party, Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Shiv Sena which have extended their support to her.
“I thank Sharad Pawar, Hemant Soren, Tejashwi Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav. Arvind Kejriwal [of Aam Aadmi Party] is my friend,” she said.
The TMC chief upped the ante against the BJP said that she won’t allow Bengal to be ruled by any outsider.
“I still believe Bengal will be ruled by the people of Bengal. I will not allow Bengal to be ruled by goons from outside. I am not tagging those who stay in Bengal or are coming to Bengal for campaigning as outsiders. But I know that thousands of people from outside the state have entered Bengal and are staying in hotels. Money is being distributed through key persons who are holding constitutional posts,” she added.
Banerjee also challenged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah to deploy as much central force as they want, but the TMC will still emerge victorious.
She also attacked the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Congress, claiming that they had joined hands with the BJP and had an “understanding” for seat-sharing.
Dismissing public perception that the BJP is breathing down her neck, Banerjee said, “This is a soft election, a smiley election. We will play, we will fight, we will win.”
China-backed operation to target India’s electricity grid.
HT reported last month several instances in which government domain email addresses were used to launch cyber attacks and the discovery of critical vulnerabilities in several government servers, which could have given attackers access deep into sensitive networks and underscores the need for the country’s digital infrastructure to be made more secure.
The government has not commented on the role of any nation-state in any of the incidents cited above.
NCSS 2021 is likely to continue with the stance on not attributing threats from a particular country. “We have not named any country,” said an official quoted above. “However, we do recognise that there are both state and non-state actors that are looking to target us in the cybersphere and along with them you have state-backed actors, hacktivists and cyber mercenaries.”
The threat landscape, this official added, “has really exploded” with attacks that have now “grown in scope and state sophistication”. “They have all come into play and they are targeting our infrastructure.”
The paper has been prepared after consultations hosted by the Cyber Security Coordinator’s office. While it does not go into solutions, it outlines the government’s threat perception in the domain. India’s approach is expected to be along the lines of the strategy documents released by countries such as the US and the UK.
The UK, for instance, recognises state-sponsored threats as “a small number of hostile foreign threat actors [that] have developed and deployed offensive cyber capabilities, including destructive ones”. The UK’S strategy document adds: “These capabilities threaten the security of the UK’S critical national infrastructure and industrial control systems. Some states may use these capabilities in contravention of international law in the belief that they can do so with relative impunity.”
NCSS 2021 will also recognise the threat of “narrative wars” on social media services, the official quoted above said. Fake news, manipulation, fraud, misinformation and disinformation will be identified as major threats. “A great number of our population use social media so we need to be aware of the different kinds of threats that lurk there,” said the official.
One of the other key aspects of the policy will be a proposal to create cells for cyber security in all institutions, public and private, which will involve dedicated budgeting of funds for such resources. “If you use information technology, then you will have to create a cell with experts in your office that will not just protect you but also protect everyone you are dealing with,” said the official. This will need a new regulatory framework, and the authors see it as a possible area of opportunity for employment and skill development.
“As a business is connected in the interconnected world, the cyber attacker may attack you and then spread their attack from there to other places. They will have to invest in IT infrastructure and security,” the official added.
Experts said India needs to focus on several aspects relating to cybersecurity. “Networks need more robust cyber physical infrastructures and for that more allocation has to happen for critical information infrastructures,” said Subimal Bhattacharjee, an independent adviser on cyber security policy issues.
“Likewise, incident reporting and response ecosystem needs more focused attention and so budgets for CERT-IN (the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) and NCIIPC (National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre) has to be increased so that they add more resources and capabilities.”
A second expert said the focus on information security in the context of social media was surprising. “The narrative warfare finding mention in the policy is surprising. I am not sure of the efficacy of mixing this with cybersecurity as it makes implementation problematic,” said Gunjan Chawla, who works with technology and national security at the National Law University, Delhi. “We hope that with this policy being developed, a lot of our security concerns will be addressed,” said a second official working on the policy, asking not to be named.