No one can be surprised by the attempt on the life of the Punjab police chief, Mr. Ribeiro. The surprise, if any, is that the attempt has taken so long to materialize. Since he took over his present job, Mr. Ribeiro has without doubt been the single biggest obstacle in the path of the terrorists in their bid to demoralize the administration, spread panic and force the Hindus to leave the state. He has done what hardly anyone believed was possible. He has restored the morale and efficiency of a force that most people had rightly written off as being highly communal, corrupt, and demoralized. He has done so by, on the one hand, getting rid of some of the men and officers who were known to be mixed up with smugglers, extremists and terrorists and, on the other, by protecting honest men and officers against interference by politicians, especially the Akalis in office. It speaks for the courage and commitment of the man that a case should have been registered against a minister still in office on the charge of assaulting a police officer on duty. It is difficult to recall another instance of this kind in any other state. Mr. Ribeiro has achieved another feat. He has produced a level of cooperation between the local police, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Border Security Force (BSF) which has seldom been witnessed. The country is lucky that he has escaped the attempt on his life unhurt. The consequences would have been grim even if he had been only injured and put out of action for some time. It would almost certainly have adversely affected the morale of the security forces operating in Punjab, especially the local police, and encouraged the extremists and the terrorists.
There was never any good reason to believe that the back of the terrorists had been broken in Punjab. Cases of individual killings almost every day in the state could leave no room for complacency. On the contrary, these showed that though the police were able to apprehend hard-core terrorists and their close lieutenants with the help of improved intelligence, a large number of killers remained outside the clutches of the security force. Indeed, Mr. Ribeiro himself said recently that only about one-third of the hardened terrorists had been caught. But if there was the slightest scope for taking an optimistic view of the situation in Punjab, there can be none now in view of the attempt on Mr. Ribeiro’s own life.
The attempt was well planned in that the culprits had secured CRPF-type uniforms and jeep. Even so, it is shocking that they could drive into Mr. Ribeiro’s residence apparently without let or hindrance. Properly trained security men would have checked the credentials of the men in the jeep. Clearly those looking after Mr. Ribeiro’s security are not so trained. This too will surprise no one in view of what happened at Rajghat on the occasion of Gandhiji’s birth anniversary celebrations on Thursday. If the Prime Minister’s security staff were not fully alerted by a gunshot and could dismiss it as something of no great consequence, what is one to expect of men guarding Mr. Ribeiro? The plain truth is that the responses of the men and officers assigned to look after the security of VIPs are too slow and they are not prepared to run the necessary risks. Both these points incidentally were fully established once again at Rajghat on October 2. The security men were not prepared to get on top of the structure where the gunman was hiding and try and catch him alive; instead they fired shots in his direction; thus they could have killed him and destroyed the evidence.
The weaknesses of the VIP security apparatus are, of course, not an isolated phenomenon. They spring from our general culture. Not one of our institutions possesses the efficiency of its counterpart in a truly modern state. But we cannot wait for an upgrading of all institutions before we make a serious attempt to establish a modern security force. A police force demoralized by low pay-scales, bad working conditions and political interference cannot throw up and sustain an elite security apparatus in the long run. And yet we must raise such an elite force. Terrorism is there to stay for quite some time and we can ensure the security of our top men only with the help of such a force.