Ishtiyaq Ahmad
Srinagar, May 13 (KINS): To keep morale of men high in covid-19 pandemic and to ensure that the suicides doesn’t become a trend among the ranks of security forces in Kashmir, the Central Reserve Police forces and Jammu and Kashmir police have decided to increase the counselling lessons and every-day destressing sessions to its men.
On Wednesday, two cases of suicides were reported in CRPF—one in Southern district of Anantnag and another in Srinagar, the capital city of Kashmir.
Both the CRPF men killed themselves by shooting with their service riffles. This prompted the top CRPF officer to fly from Jammu to Srinagar to take stock of things. “The two incidents are very unfortunate. It seems that lockdown is resulting in mental stress as our boys have not been able to avail leave since March 20. They are far from their families and that may be the reason as to why two of our men today took extreme step of committing suicide,” a senior officer in the CRPF told new agency KINS.
Special Director General of CRPF said that they will find out the reason that forced two CRPF men to kill themselves. Asked whether being far away from families may be the reason for increased level of stress among the men, he said that CRPF men are getting regular counselling sessions. “We will ascertain the cause,” he said.
The CRPF men are concerned that suicides shouldn’t become a trend in the forces ranks. “There has been a prolonged lockdown. In between phone services too were snapped. Internet too was barred and boys couldn’t make video call to see their parents, wives and children. This may be the reason for increase in the level of stress,”
J&K police too is concerned even though its workforce belongs to J&K districts only yet it has increased frequent counselling, de-stressing briefings and also some moral raising steps.
“It’s not that easy. Our men fast in the month of Ramadhan and still remain on roads since morning to evening. They too are not able to avail leave due to the pandemic Covid. But thank God there are no suicidal tendencies among our men. We have taken a series of steps in advance to stop that,” a top police officer disclosed to KINS.
He said a few steps entail morning and evening briefings, counselling sessions at their respective units and also the de-stressing briefings. “With minimum protective gear, our men are maintaining the human approach on ground zero and we hope this will continue,” he said.
It is to mention here that in 2019 the guidelines framed by a board of officers of psychiatrists, which include regular psychiatric evaluation, improving the grievance redressal mechanism, were handed over to the paramilitary forces by the Ministry of Home Affairs and asked for its strict implementation.
According to data shared by the centre in Rajya Sabha in 2018, 228 CRPF jawans lost their lives to suicide in the seven years.
Experts and counsellors working towards addressing the psycho-social problems among the forces deployed here in Kashmir point at stress, separation from families, long duty hours and poor command and control structures as contributing factors for more than 70% of deaths in such incidents since 2001.
In 2018, recognising the rising suicide cases among the forces, the then Director General CRPF RR Bhatnagar now advisor to LG Jammu and Kashmir union territory had launched a first-time project to ascertain jawans’ mental health.
Bhatnagar had said that he had passed directions and “made it a point that every suicide case in the force is thoroughly investigated. “This is to see that if there were certain signals that the person who committed suicide was giving and if yes, were they picked up and responded to or not?”
A “lot of effort” had been made in the force to address these problems and some standard operating procedures and guidelines have been framed. We have put stress on the ‘buddy system’ where one trooper is responsible for the other. We have asked unit and battalion commanders to frequently interact with their subordinates and their team, especially when a jawan comes back from home as that is the time many incidents of suicide take place as the person brings back some issues of home with him,” he had said.
The Bhatnagar had asserted that they have found that largely the reasons behind suicide cases in the force were due to domestic or household issues and also due to the “pressures of today’s modern day lives”.
The government’s police think-tank Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) had also conducted a study in 2004 into the factors causing stress while in 2012, Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad also did a similar study for the BSF and the CRPF. Some of the reasons for committing suicide by police personnel cited in these studies were personal problems, illness and other family circumstances. (KINS)
