Srinagar:
Shocking details have emerged on how some policemen and jawans, were part of the stone-pelting mobs, that Kashmir's security forces repeatedly clashed with, during the civil strife between June and September last year.
NDTV has access to documents that show at least four policemen and one Army jawan were involved in the incidents.
"Some of them have been circumstantial because if they have been stuck in a locality and forced out of their homes. Those things are not exactly indicative or symptomatic of police behavior," said SM Sahai, Inspector General of Police, Kashmir.
The official line may be that it was an act of aberration, but three policemen have already been arrested, one has been charged, and one more is being probed to see if he funded a group of stone-pelters.
Many Special Police Officers on contract, deserted the force when the agitation was at its peak. Three policemen at Police Training Centre in Baramulla quit their jobs. Some of them possibly felt a sense of alignment with the agitation, but most succumbed to the rising anger of the people against the police.
"In June-July, when the situation worsened, the police faced a huge pressure. So, I granted the force a Hardship Allowance," said Omar Abdullah, Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir.
The police say the bigger challenge before it is the extent of the involvement of government employees.
"We are more concerned about government employees who have been actively involved in organising stone-pelting and funding it," said SM Sahai.
Eighty government employees have been arrested, and cases have been registered against 181. Many of them are teachers. Ten serious offenders have been jailed for two years, without the benefit of trial.
The four-month long civil strife was a tightrope walk for local policemen. Now the expose, that some men in uniform were involved in stone-pelting has embarrassed the force that claimed all this while that the summer's unrest was fuelled by militants.