Putting a serious question mark on its image as disciplined force, Army officers and jawans of a regiment posted at a forward base in Ladakh clashed over an incident of alleged molestation involving an orderly and the reported capturing of the armoury by the agitated soldiers.
The trigger for the clash took place late yesterday afternoon in Nyoma sub-district, located 150 kilometres from Leh, when a jawan allegedly misbehaved with the wife of a Major who beat him up, official sources said.
The officers and jawans of 226 Field Regiment were undergoing firing practice at this place.
The Major did not permit other jawans to allow any medical treatment for the ‘sahayak’ fuelling anger among the colleagues who objected, the sources said.
The news reached the Commanding Officer of the regiment who was camping in nearby police guest house. He immediately reached the scene and gauging the mood shouted at the Major for his reluctance to allow the injured ‘sahayak’ being taken for treatment.
Seeing this, the Major along with five of his officer colleagues beat the Commanding Officer, a Colonel, in front of jawans. This angered the jawans who then went berserk and beat the other officers with sticks, the sources said.
The Commanding Officer was immediately shifted to Leh hospital.Nearly 40 to 50 jawans then started a search for Major rank officers. Two were found in nearby camp and were beaten up, the sources said, adding they were rescued after an intervention by the local police.
Three Majors were still hiding and are believed to have moved towards Chashool army camp located on Sino-India border, the sources said. The 226-Field Regiment Unit has been cordoned and senior officers of Leh-based 14 Corps have rushed to the scene, they said.
Later this afternoon General Officer- -in-Command of Third Infantry division assured the jawans, who had captured the armoury, that action will be taken against the erring officers, the sources said.
The sources said though the jawans had armoury under their control, no withdrawal of weapons has been resorted to.
Superintendent of Police (Leh) Vivek Gupta was camping in Nyoma along with heavy reinforcements following a report by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate that army jawans, armed with sticks and knives, were holding protest, the sources said.
-via Deccan Herald.
Next time the Jawans / other ranks may also be wanting permissions to take their wives/families to the field firing ranges in the tough high altitude, border, mountain area to let them have a feel of the same. They may be better behaved than their counterparts in the officer cadres. Then what will the batallions do ? The indscipline is a related term. The Jawans are the people who have been trained & taught to respect their officers and maintain the descipline. It must have been a case of extra-mental imagination on the part of the officer’s wife thinking that she could do anything & behave in any manner thinking that the Jawans are goolams of officers & not their life saviours in times of wars. Let us say if the officer was taking his wife to the field firing range, he should have briefed her properly & explained to her the customs to be followed. But it had not been done by the officer. Probably, the officer was a newly married person, and he might have taken his wife to Ladakh where the officers are allowed to keep their families now in LEH. Now there are family accomodations in LEH. This has been done specially because LEH & other areas have been opened for tourists as a govt. policy. The only thing lacking was that the particular officer’s wife may not have much experience of regimental life / regimentation. Therefore she might have unknowingly acted in that manner exceedingly that may have outraged the self respect of a Jawan in the difficult high altitude areas. Certainly also for the Jawan it was an action at the spur of the moment, otherwise he would have loved to respect the officer’s wife from the inner side of his heart because they are trained in regimentation. It was a stray incident which could not be avoided but happened. There is nothing like a mutiny in it except to call it a sad moment which happened. It should be forgotten & the whole unit should be brought down to a peace area to again live & train together & recover the lost love & inter relations. They are one & same. They will forget it in a short time & again and will be ready to go to the field for the country.
Army officers often behave like the present age maharajas. Sahayak is not even allowed to a secretary level officer in civil. They are used for all sort of menial works and are often treated like slaves (esp by officers wives who are akin to neo age Maharanis). Moreover nearly all the officers have a exaggerated sense of overconfidence and live in a make belief world that they are decedents of prince charles. There walk and talk are all like britishers, and they are quite ashamed to speak in hindi or other vernacular language. There traditions are all very british like. They eat up about 4% of our GDP whereas most of our country live in abject poverty. In last about 40 yrs they have only fought one war when they were sleeping in kargil and pakistani occupied there posts
First senior officers should learn to get out of their air conditioned offices and know the ground realities. In Indian army 3% (Cols and above) abuse their positions and enjoy facilities meant for balance 97%(Lt to Lt Col).Junior Officers are treated as slaves who don’t have the right to opinion and are exploited on the name of ACRs.Please don’t force me to wash dirty linen in public.Bashing senior officer to put his brain in place is only a begining of putting house in order. The young officers will agree with me.
dear Col Lamba sir, as far as I understood from various sources, ‘sahayak’ is not meant for providing security to an officer otherwise they would have escorted officers during vacations also. Unlike trained/matured officers, wives may not understood the difference between a servant and enlisted jawan. I was talking about just unwanted colonial bagages shold be removed not all glorious traditions. Even pak army had abondoned this system in 2004. with regards
Firstly it is high time to stop this Sahayak business in the army. I thought a sahayak is meant to help the officer in carrying and maintaining his war kit, horse etc ,not for helping his wife in kitchen for free ! How do the officers spend all the money given to them as salary,perks and privileges ? Secondly what was the officer’s wife doing at the Firing practise site. If the officer cant live all by himself for a short while,how is he going to fight a war ! And in that case, what about the jawans ? Are they less than human beings ? Finally the officer concerned was immature in handling the situation and aggravated it by behaving like a roadside macho ! The poor CO made himself comfortable in a govt. guest house, leaving every thing to juniors,and he was tactless too. This is the state of our army led by heros like Gen VK Singh !
The wives of officers being taken to firing ranges is common practice in the non operational areas. But cerainly they cannot be taken out by officers for picnic at the firing ranges in the field areas, & specially to hard high altitude border areas like Ladakh near the Chinese border. may be the families act funny & donot listen to the safety regulations. It was a sad incident from both sided (Actually both of them constitute one side only). This indiscipline at the said location is serious & all the personnel should be sent home may be with pensions. The conditions of discipline under the present Chiel have bery much deteriorated.
We will deal with this situation in four phases
(a) Why this situation arose ?
(b) Reaction of the Commanding Officer !
(c) How to avoid such ugly situation in future ?
(d) Now What ?
WHY THIS SITUATION AROSE ?
CO must have been a youngster of 14/15/16 yrs of service.
Just stop this stupidity of making a mockery of such a sacred position. A CO is a demi God for his men. He has to have a rich experience of being a human being , a worldly wise person , a matured man,an experienced person having such like ablities and qualities, he has to possess and not just a mere paper tiger.All deltas/instructors/psc do not make good COs. Plz do not make him a CO the moment he clears his board. Let him do two tenures of 2yrs on some staff / ere and then he shud take over as a CO. By that time his ego would have levelled a lot, ideas would have cleared a lot and he will do well as he would have seen the world on the other side too.
This was due to gain cheap popularity amongst the officers by permitting families at field firing ranges.
Loose command and control right from the begining of his tenure.
Such Circumstances should not have been created either by husband or by wife to encourage the OR to resort to mis-behaviour .
REACTION OF CO !
CO shud not have allowed to congregate offrs and men the moment he reached the spot,He shud have first sympathetically removed the injured OR to the hospital and simultaneously sent the concerned offr to the police guest house where the CO was staying, escorted by two officers to guard him.Thus he wud have successfully diffused the situation by removing both instigating causes from the sight, There after he shud have addressed the men and offrs on the spot to hold a CoI to investigate and punish the culprits accordingly.Not that, this is the first time that such an ugly situation has arisen. In the past as well on many such occasions such incidents have happened which have been diffused amicably by the mature ,experienced and wise COs.
HOW TO AVOID SUCH UGLY SITUATION IN FUTURE ?
Middle mgt like Majors and Lt cols should be amply exercised in man mgt which grossly lacked at this place.
Ofrrs wives shud also be groomed to dress modestly while with troops.
Familiarity breeds contempt,hence avoid it.
The COs of tomorrow shud be given ample exposure in units consisting of men in uniform and civilians like NCC,TRANSIT CAMP, ORD FYS,DGOF R&D ESTT, prior to taking over the units command where they have to deal with men and their emotions.These postings shud be treated as their Acid Test prior to taking over any command.
NOW WHAT ?
Apart from chain of disciplinary actions, offrs and men shud be just shunted out to different regiments and this regiment be disbanded irrespective of its past rich history or else this too will go down the anals of history of the regiment.
Apart from UPSC and SSB ; FAMILY background BE GIVEN UTMOST IMPORTANCE FOR MAKING AN INDIAN ARMY OFFICER AS WAS DONE IN YESTER YEARS !!!
Indian Army should abondon its so called great traditions borrowed from british. It was created to control rankers. The formation of sikh, jat,maratha,rajput, mahar regiments etc by brits were instrumental to empose the ‘Divide and Rule’ policy. The ‘Shahayak’ system is another bad example. By the way, what the hell familes/wives of officers were doing at a range firng practice.
DEAR TIWARI
1. YOU ARE RIGHT IN YOUR WAY AWAY FROM REAL SITUATION
A. WHY YOUNG OFFICER [MAJOR] HAS TAKEN TO FIELD FIRING[ FAMILIES ARE PROHIBITED]
B] ‘Shahayak’ IS HELPER TO HELP OFFICER & PASSES MESSAGE TO HIS SUBORDINATE [PHYSICAL MOVEMENTS DUE TO SECURITY REASONS IN FIELD] & SECURITY TO OFFICER
C]IF YOU THINK SHAHAYAK SHOULD NOT BE THERE THAN KINDLY REMOVE ALL SECURITY COVER OF IAS/JUDGES/POLICE/MP/MLA/CM/PM/ PRESIDENT. THEY ALL ARE JANTA NETA WHY FEAR FROM JANTA
D]YOU KNOW ALL RACES HAVE PARTICULAR TRAITS FORGET BRITISH, SEE OUR MANU. MARTIAL RACES[SHATRIES] BRAHMINS[LEARNED eg PROFESSOR/POLICE MAKERS/ECYONOMIC ADVISERS EXTRA] SO MARATHA/SIKH/GORKHA/RAJPUT EXTRA ARE MARTIAL RACES. SEE FIGURE OVER AGES &BATTLE WINS OVER AGES WILL PROVE THE FACT
3. GUILTY YOUNG OFFICER SHOULD BE HEAVILY PUNISHED & THROWN OUT OF SERVICE. HOW CAN YOU KICK YOUR JUNIOR DUE TO YOUR FAULT & HAVE FURTHER GUTS TO THRASH YOUR BOSS
4. NO JUNGLE LARGE IS PERMITTED IN ANY WORLD ARMY
REGARDS
Only the officers are known that I am a officer but they do not know how should command to his juniors either tightly or loosely. The officers are looking only rank that I am Major, Lt col or Col like that.. but they do not know that they have to control the people according to their situation. They only show the their Ranks and powers that time also. So that disputes arise they could not control theirselves. According to Col Lamba it is right that officers are lack of experience for their early promotion. They should not want to look with subordinators because they think that people will not respect him, but if a man will respect others as human being then it will refelct surely. According my knowledge we all are one. We are not diffrent from each others. God has given birth us in this world to live peacefully by recognising each other that we all are brothers. God is our father. Everthing can solve by God, we just have to faith him. Took mind peace on that situation. Please do not clash with each other. We all are posted at one place to live peacefully by mutual understand our every problems as brotherhoodly. At list u may please forget on that time when dispute arise between us that we are officer, jcos and ORs. We all are brothers we were sent by God for serving the nation. . . . . Jai Hind.
Field Firing Practice…..Whatz da Lady wife doing there?
You can call personal lust higher than regimental duty & welfare of troops.
That was a tremendous failure at all levels. The culpability of the jawan, who molested. The officer, who rather than resorting to official means, took to thrashing the accused. The CO, for resorting to the extraordinary act of berating the Major before the men. The other officers, who resorted to the act of thrashing their CO.
This is not the first incident of this type .history repeats it self. A major[means major] rank was achieved in 13/14 years. The officer has enough experience to command a company but such incident rarely happen due to negligence of officer wife.
Now a major rank is achieved in 5 years. He has hardly ground experience to command a company/battery as most of time is gone in various courses. He further lacks maturity & experience to command a company. He is just married & unable to train for services conduct /duties.
A jawan living in difficult situation is to be looked after young brother. Ill treatment will give rise to indiscipline & troops taking arms to defend their respect & honour
Punish the guilty & calm the situation
why is it only officers after the lives of officers????why is no one thinkin bout what a husband wouldve gone thru…had it happened to ur wife or daughter….sorry for being personal…this psyche is the reason why jawans in todays fauj r gettin outta control…the senior lot in all their wisdom only crib bout promotions at young age!!!jus b coz they didnt get it at their times…???!!!it is the mindset of the officer fraternity especially the senior lot which needs change…food for thought…
well net…first of all the officer should have not gone against the rule ie taking wife to firing range. that is an absolute no no in fauji rule n regulation. and in this 21st century i think if she has so much guts to be with 100 of `troops in a firing range then she shud have psyche herself for any ugly situation. both husband n wife cud have handle it maintaining a low profile..but bcos of her not only is her husband image tarnish but also his regiment, his commanding officer(who in good faith of the officer n wife must have given permission to bring her to firing range)….n not forgetting INDIAN ARMY. n senior officer can say anything so dont bother about it…change have been brought as it can be seen that this generation have the capability to handle what senior officers can handle when they were double our age.