The personnel of 10th IRB battalion staged protests virtually for the whole day virtually for the whole day yesterday and two companies of advance party scheduled to leave for West Bengal refused to go to the line of duty unless they were assured of all necessary arms, ammunitions, other logistics and the ex-gratia to be paid in the event of casualty.
They burnt rations and other belongings at Nagaland Armed Police Training Centre (NAPTC), Chumukedima near Dimapur.
The personnel, some of whom were to leave by buses for Bengal, told media persons that they “cannot fight well equipped Naxals with vintage SLRs, some of which have no firing pins and magazines that could be fitted to them.”
The hand grenades provided to them were about 30 years old, they complained and added the IRB companies were asked to go to the line of action with insufficient officers.
High caliber rifles such as AKs, LMG had not been provided to them despite stipulated norms for making available better weapons to carry out counter-insurgency operations, they claimed.
They also complained that their former commanding officer did not brief them properly during the months before leaving for fighting the Naxals, a practice before every assignment and operation.
Top police officials, including Nagaland Director General of Police K Kire and Additional Director General (Ops) SN Achumi arrived at the spot in the evening and pacified the IRB personnel and brought the situation under control.
Kire assured that their concerns would be looked into before they left for West Bengal.
He told newsmen that necessary logistical arrangements had been made and unserviceable weapons would be replaced.
“The IRB personnel should, however, maintain the weapons issued to them,” he said and conceded that there was shortage of officers in the battalion and no grenade training was given to the 10th IRB personnel, who were still using 30 year old ones due to non requisition.
“The incident reflected a bad image for the force as a whole and a probe would be conducted into the entire episode,” he said and owned moral responsibility for it. –PTI
