On June 4, 2019, Budgam police received a tip-off about the presence of armed terrorists in Bugam village in Chadoora tehsil in Jammu and Kashmir. A joint operation was planned in the dead of the night by a team of the Budgam police and Rashtriya Rifles. Four teams set out on foot taking the cover of darkness to find the hiding terrorists, and upon search and cordon, the terrorists were found holed up in a house in a civilian area. To avoid any civilian casualties in cross firing, the teams waited till the first ray of light to detect the armed terrorists.
A second team was called in, and part of that team were constables Matloob Hussain Shah and Asrar Ahmed Mir, who, despite being fired upon, did not care about their personal safety and took strategic positions, resulting in the elimination of one terrorist. Both Shah and Mir have been awarded President’s Police Medals for Gallantry for contributing to the efforts being made by the government to usher peace in the valley.
This year, Jammu and Kashmir Police set a record by receiving the highest number of gallantry medals among state police as well as central armed police forces.
The trend of central forces bagging a large number of medals has been broken as their numbers have gone down, indicating state police forces are stepping up and doing their jobs better. “Law and order is a state subject and even in counter insurgency operations, state police personnel taking the lead is a step in the positive direction,” said a security official .
In the last few years, more attention is being paid to training state police personnel and equipping them to handle challenges on par with central forces or even better, said a government official .
A total 939 police personnel have been awarded medals on the occasion of Republic Day. Among the majority of 189 Gallantry Awards, 134 personnel have been awarded for their gallant action in Jammu & Kashmir region, 47 personnel for their gallant action in Left wing extremism affected areas and one person for gallant action in Northeast Region. Among the personnel receiving Gallantry Awards, 115 are from J&K Police, 30 from CRPF, three from ITBP, two from BSF, three from SSB, 10 from Chhattisgarh Police, nine from Odisha Police and seven from Maharashtra Police and the remaining from the other states and Union territories .
Among senior officers who have received the award are DCP, special cell of Delhi Police, Sanjeev Kumar Yadav, who has been awarded the gallantry medal for the ninth time, and Prashant Kumar, additional director general of Uttar Pradesh, who has got the medal a second time. Yadav has led counter-terror operations that led to the elimination of Indian Mujahideen terrorists, breaking the backbone of the urban terror outfit, while Kumar is in good books of the Yogi Adityanath government for controlling the crime rate in the state, notorious for law and order problems.
