Armed personnel convoys, are they a live disaster ?
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: August 25 2011 -

Of late truck drivers along National Highways 39 and 53 have been subjected to barbarous behaviour on them by those imposing movement on the highways.

These brigands acting under an ill disguised political façade and fuelled by anger at all and sundry have been scaring people away from the highways. The strength of the state's police department is simply not enough to provide adequate security along NH 39 and 53. The outcome is that the despicaple actions of roadway brigands on the two highways have escalated.

In this context, innocent drivers of goods trucks often seek what they feel is a safe passage by mingling and travelling along with Army or para-military convoys.

In a tragi-comic travesty of natural justice such convoys accept a certain amount of civilian vehicles to accompany them on the onward journey only to let the vehicles be hand picked by brigands to be torched and destroyed in the support of a ‘cause’ known only to them.

This is the comic part of the episode, the tragic part is, the army or para military personnel who had given the initial blanket coverage of security to these unfortunate truckers choose to be silent bystanders when they, the truckers, are selectively picked out for destruction.

The only surmise is that the personnel in uniform have no clout over the brigands.

When we as ordinary citizens realize that vehicles which opted to be part of a convoy deployed by officially uniformed personnel had been selectively picked or isolated by communal agents, and thereafter destroyed, in or out of their presence veers towards a strange interpretation of India's constitutional laws, and an even stranger reality of those driving the engine of Indian democracy.

In a few short words here in Manipur, we are being ruled by separate sets of laws.

Our puny minds wish to please ask why convoys of armed personnel accept civilian vehicles to be part of their team in the first place.

Are the convoy commanders empowered to accept civil vehicles to be part of their convoys? If so, are they required to give such civilian vehicles protection?

If not, are such vehicles being accepted to be part of a convoy only to promote the image of the armed personnel who have a double faced role, to please the truckers, and to be politely compliant to brigands.

Since law breakers in the hills can rely on official armed personnel and truckers on the NHs cannot, the government has a job in its hands.

The job is startlingly easy, provide a safe passage to the trucks and buses, and make sure to smother those who have chosen to make oppression of others a profession.