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NEWS Updates - 20
March 2009 |
* Murder For Sports?
CRPF troopers violated SOP: DIG
*
Assistant Commdt with party held
* Bomai
stir resumes
* Govt can't
protect people: PDP |
Murder For Sports?
CRPF troopers violated SOP:
DIG : Khaigam (Pakharpora), Mar 19: Despair
and gloom is writ large on the faces of every single
individual in this sleepy hamlet near the famous resort
of Yusmarg as hundreds of people from adjoining villages
headed to join the funeral procession of Ghulam
Mohi-ud-din Malik (37), killed by paramilitary Central
Reserve Police Force personnel on Wednesday evening.
Crying bitterly, Shahnawaz, the 12-year old son of slain
Malik, who is in his 6th grade, asks everyone around to
“bring back his Papa” knowing little that he had
departed for a place wherefrom nobody has ever returned.
“I was sitting with my grandfather when the CRPF
troopers came and enquired about guests. They closed the
door on us and asked us to flee. We went to our aunt’s
house. Later, we learnt our father had been martyred,”
said Shahnawaz, adding he did not want anything except
the return of his father.
MURDER FOR SPORT
Going by the sequence of events, there was no compelling
reason for the troopers to go for the kill. It seems to
be a murder for sport.
Malik has never been a militant in his life. In fact,
this village has not contributed a single person toward
militancy, or witnessed a gunfight, real or staged, in
the past two decades. A carpenter by profession, the
deceased had tremendous responsibilities on his
shoulders. He was the only breadwinner of his family
comprising his pregnant wife, four children, ailing
70-year old mother, and deaf 78-year old father.
The carpenter was giving finishing touches to a single
story house he had been constructing for the past three
years, while living on the largesse of a neighbor who
had given him a house to live in, and in which he was
brutally shot dead. He was not caught up in a
gunfight--real or staged--between the troopers and
militants that he could be labeled as collateral damage.
Police records have nothing against him. There is
nothing that could remotely establish a connection
between his murder and the incursion of the CRPF
troopers into his house on Wednesday evening.
EYEWITNESS SAYS IT WAS MURDER IN COLD BLOOD
The village chowkidar, Nazir Ahmad Magray son of
Muhammad Abdullah, witnessed it all. He says:
“A group of CRPF men came to my house and ordered me to
accompany them for a search operation. Before going for
search, one of them told me how many Akbars live in this
village. I said three. But they didn’t ask me about
their specific details. Instead, they led me straight to
the house of Ghulam Mohiuddin. There I found several
troopers had already cordoned off the house.
“A Kashmiri speaking trooper called by his colleagues as
Pandit went with me inside and they asked Mohiuddin’s
father, ‘Was there any guest in the house?’. He told
them there wasn’t any. Then they searched the rooms. The
ground floor is used for rearing cows. In the second
story, we found Mohiuddin’s mother resting in one of
rooms, and his son and father in the other.
“Then the Kashmiri speaking trooper and his partner went
to the space under roof where the family stores fodder
and grains. But from the landing itself they shot a
volley of fire toward the right side of the Kanee (the
crawl space below the roof) where Ghulam Mohiuddin was
shuffling grass bundles.
“I rushed down, taken by the fear that since I saw
everything they would kill me now. So I went into a room
and sat with Mohiuddin’s father but not for long as I
was very restless. I came out of the house and went to a
CRPF hawildar. I asked him did you kill a militant
there? Was he a militant you fired at? He said ‘gapla
hogaya (it was a blunder), there were no militants
there.’ Just then I received a call from my wife. She
had heard gunshots and my family was feeling worried.
That is when I noticed the time. It was 7.22 PM.”
Asked if there was cross-fire in the house as claimed by
the CRPF spokesman, Nazir said, “It is a big lie. Would
he have fired with grass? The only fire I heard was
theirs.” Nazir said he returned to the house with
Mohiuddin’s cousin he met in the village. “When we came
back we found the troopers were leaving from the spot
like thieves. We took a gas lamp and went straight to
the roof space. We found Ghulam Mohiuddin’s body among
bundles of grass. His chest was riddled with bullets,”
Nazir said.
‘TARGETED KILLING’
The area of the crawl space doesn’t exceed more than 150
sq feet. It is packed with bundles of paddy and corn
straw, the fodder for cattle. Three big wooden boxes
filled with rice occupy the rest of the space. Ghulam
Mohiuddin had gone there to fetch the fodder for the
cattle. His body was found in the right corner of the
space.
This morning, police recovered a live bullet of INSAS
rifle (used by Indian armed forces) and several
cartridges near the spot where he fell to the bullets of
the troopers, suggesting he had been shot from very
close range.
The landing, from which the troopers fired, according to
eyewitness Nazir, is nearly two and half metres away
from the spot.
Police marked with chalk the portion of a wooden pole
pockmarked with bullets. Mohiuddin had fallen close to
this pole. Concentration of bullet marks on a nine inch
space of the pole indicates the troopers fired toward
him, the policemen said. Police also found bullet marks
on the wooden planks, all on the right corner of the
space. They didn’t find a single bullet mark in any
other direction.
Policemen who were collecting forensic evidence said
that killing was targeted, as they didn’t find a stray
bullet mark on the tin roof or the planks in any other
direction except the right corner where Malik was
picking up the bundle. Cross fire, they said, is random,
not directed like this case. Besides, the troopers had
fired at least 19 bullets into his chest, an unlikely
case in cross fire, the policemen said.
The villagers said that while fleeing from the house the
troopers fired some shots toward the house to make it
look like cross fire.
VIOLATING SOP WITH IMPUNITY
Asked if the CRPF troopers violated the Standard
Operational Procedure that makes it mandatory for the
armed forces to inform the local police prior to a
counter-militancy operation, and also take police along
during such operations, the deputy inspector general of
police, Rajesh Kumar, told Greater Kashmir, “They didn’t
inform police prior to the incident. Yes, they have
violated the SOP again.”
After the killing of two civilians in Bomai, Sopur, last
month the chief minister, Omar Abdullah, had asked the
armed forces to follow the SOP, but army violated it in
Bomai murdering two civilians, the CRPF violated it in
Khaigam, murdering the carpenter Ghulam Mohiuddin.
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Assistant Commdt with party held :
Pulwama, Mar 19: Police station
Rajpora has registered a case under
sections 302 (murder) and 452
(trespassing into a house with intention
or purpose of assaulting or hurting
someone) against the troopers of 181
battalion of CRPF accused of murdering a
carpenter, Ghulam Mohiuddin of Khaigam,
Pakharpora.
According to CRPF spokesman, Prabhakar
Tripathi, four troopers, including an
Assistant Commandant, have been
suspended. Meanwhile, the entire party
of CRPF, including an assistant
commandant, involved in the carpenter’s
killing have been detained, police said
late this evening.
Talking to Greater Kashmir, the deputy
inspector-general of police, South
Kashmir Range, Rajesh Kumar, said the
whole party had been detained in
connection with the incident. Asked the
number of those detained, he said, they
were eight to 10 persons. “We will
identify the main accused tomorrow,” he
said, adding the investigation into the
incident was going on.
In a related development, the government
has ordered a probe into the murder. The
deputy commissioner of Pulwama, Ishtiyaq
Ahmad Ashai, said the additional deputy
commissioner of Pulwama, Aadil Rashid
Naqash, had been tasked to probe the
killing and submit his report within 10
days. |
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Bomai stir resumes : Bomai (Sopur),
Mar 19: Twenty six days after the
killing of two civilians by the army,
residents of Bomai and adjoining
villages on Thursday resumed their
agitation by holding a massive
demonstration and the school-goers’
boycott of classes to press their
demands.
The decision came after termed as the
administration’s failure to get the army
camp shifted out of the village by the
agreed date. The stir remained suspended
for 13 days following assurance by the
administration to remove the camp in 12
days.
Amid complete shutdown, thousands of
people, including a large number of
women and children, from about 10
villages took to streets this morning,
demanding punishment to troopers
involved in killings of the civilians on
February 21 and removal of the camp of
22 Rashtriya Rifles known as “Rajinder
Post.” Vehicular traffic in the area
remained suspended for the day.
Raising pro-freedom and anti-army
slogans, the protesters marched through
the streets. The Jammu and Kashmir
Liberation Front chairman, Muhammed
Yasin Malik, joined the protesters
saluting them for showing resistance and
pledging his party’s support.
The Coordination Committee, spearheading
the agitation, had yesterday decided to
go ahead with their proposed migration
on March 21, after the failure of its
talks with the administration. On March
5, the deputy commissioner,
Latief-uz-Zaman Deva, had assured the
Committee that the camp would be removed
within 12 days.
More than 2,500 students enrolled with
the twin educational institutions of the
village abstained from their classes.
“We will not study till army camp is
removed from here. Hearing their lewd
comments and abuses has been a routine
for us and they disturb us by tossing
pebbles into our classrooms,” a group of
girl students told Greater Kashmir,
vowing to continue the protests till the
troops leave the village.
“We will start mass migration from the
village on March 21 and wouldn’t be
cowed down by threats and pressure from
different agencies to call off the plan.
“They are pressuring us to strike a
compromise with them but we will not be
deterred by their coercion. Our
migration will be peaceful,” said the
Co-ordination president, Hakim-ur-Rehman.
When contacted, the deputy commissioner
said the government was keen to resolve
the issue. “Their proposal is under
active consideration. We want they
should live in peace,” he said, adding
nobody had the power or mandate to
threaten them. He was responding to the
allegations of harassment by the
troopers. |
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Govt can't protect people: PDP :
Jammu, Mar 19: The Peoples Democratic
Party patron, Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, has
said the state government looked
pathetically helpless in safeguarding
the life and dignity of people. “They
have proved totally unequal to the
task,” he told a party meeting here
today.
Strongly condemning the killing of
innocent citizens, Mufti said the
Government was either incompetent to
deal with the situation or had
deliberately unleashed troops on the
people to recreate the pre-2002
atmosphere of terror and insecurity. He
said NC had historically been a
beneficiary of unsettled conditions in
the State and it seems the party is
again creating a fear psychosis ahead of
the Lok Sabha polls to reap the benefits
of low voter turn-out.
Mufti said the streak of killings have
started damaging the atmosphere of
reconciliation that the ‘PDP had
painstakingly built over the past six
years.’ He said loss of life, the latest
being the murder of a carpenter at
Khaigam Pulwama, is only the more cruel
aspect of human rights violations by the
state apparatus and added that the
incidents of public humiliation by
security forces day in and day out were
no less condemnable. “The incident at
Karan Nagar in which respectable
citizens were beaten up on a flimsy
ground cannot be tolerated in any decent
society,” he said.
Reiterating his demand for immediate
scrapping of Armed Forces Special Powers
Act and handing over the internal
security to state police, Mufti said
that alone could ensure dignified life
for the citizens of state who have
pinned great hopes in democratic process
and voted in elections as never before.
He said it cannot infuse any confidence
among the people to see their chief
minister petitioning one central
minister after the other and security
forces officers “to do the favor of an
inquiry in such incidents” and wondered
why the state inquiry into Bomai
incident was at all ordered to further
lower the image of the Government. “What
is the role of the chief minister then
as head of the Unified Command?” Mufti
asked.
The PDP Patron said the power of
people’s voice should not be
under-estimated by the State. The
government should learn from recent
experiences in the State and the region
around us and reach out to people
through democratic means. “Soldier and
his gun should cease to be the only face
of great Indian democracy in Kashmir,”
he cautioned and stressed the need for
empowering civil society institutions in
the State. |
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NEWS /
Articles are reproductions of Local News
Papers (Greater Kashmir & Others)
So the legal rights are with there
respective Writers / Publishers |
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