Qamarwari shootout

A head must roll---either DGP Khoda’s or MP Shariq’s

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Dec 1: In June National Conference’s Minister in the Cabinet, Ali Mohammad Sagar, called CRPF “an unbridled force”. Two months later, NC’s Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha member) from South Kashmir, Ghulam Nabi Rattanpuri, used the same adjective for Jammu & Kashmir Police. Now, NC’s MP from North Kashmir (Rajya Sabha member), Sharief-ud-din Shariq has audaciously branded J&K Police as “killers”. Shariq has dismissed Monday’s broad daylight shootout in the capital city outskirts of Qamarwari as “cold-blooded murder of three innocent youth”. According to local newspapers, Shariq threatened to take up Monday’s “brutal incident” not only with Chief Minister but also with the Union Home Minister.

Broadcaster-turned-MP Rattanpuri is a green hand politician. Shariq as well Sagar are senior leaders of Omar Abdullah’s NC. Over the last 30 years, Shariq has served as NC’s representative in Parliament as well as in J&K Legislative Assembly. Elected for the Assembly in 1983 with a massive mandate, Sagar has been a Minister continually since 1989. All the three have taken lead over not only Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP but also on both factions of the separatist Hurriyat Conference in demonizing CRPF and J&K Police and discrediting the institutions of the Government of India and Government of Jammu & Kashmir while highlighting the “cold blooded murders” happening in their own leader Omar Abdullah’s government.

These approvers of the “cold blooded murders” of their own government need not to take up the issue of the human rights abuse, committed by J&K Police or CRPF, that has been assisting the state Police in counter-insurgency operations and law and order situations, with Home Minister Chidambaram, Defence Minister Antony or Prime Minister Manmohan Sigh. If they really believe that CRPF and J&K Police have been felling innocent lives, as has been alleged by the Valley’s separatist leaders and Pakistan since 1990, they need to complain the matter to Mr Omar Abdullah, who happens to be not only the head of the government but also the state Home Minister and President of their party.

J&K Police officers, who, according to Mr Rattanpuri, have not only the liberty of killing innocent people but also the temerity of delivering threats by telephone on the ruling party’s Members of the Parliament, function directly under Chief Minister and Home Minister of the state, Mr Omar Abdullah. Sagar’s publicly demonized CRPF has a Special DG posted in Srinagar but, for all practical purposes, this paramilitary force has been working under the command and control of District SPs of J&K Police.

Like Rattanpuri’s and Sagar’s, Shariq’s allegation is directed, more than anybody else, on Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. Police officials, who gunned down three young persons during or after the killing of a Constable in the afternoon on Monday last at Qamarwari, are men of Police Station Parimpora. Shariq and his lawmaking colleagues must be aware of the fact that Police is a state subject and Chidambaram has no constitutional mechanism to chasten the erring personnel of J&K Police.

Again, while Shariq was leveling the allegation of cold blooded murder, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was rewarding the “killers” by something they could not have imagined in their life. The Constable from a Tangmarg village, who had no SOG background, was instantaneously given not only cash reward of Rs 5 Lakh but also four grade promotions. In the morning on Monday, he was a Constable and the same evening saw him wearing the rank of ASI. Purchasing a jacket inside a shop, he heard gunshots and saw his colleague felling to the pistol shots of two youth well on the highway. As most of the non-SGO men do, he too preferred silence to his own death.

As he told his seniors later, he was driven by impulse only when he saw two youth laughing after the murder and handing over the slain constable’s AK-47 rifle to their pheran-clad colleague. He followed the trio for less than a minute and shot dead all of them. Police records mention that the slain constable’s AK-47 rifle and two automatic pistols were recovered from the possession of the three youth killed. Besides, each of them had two hand grenades tied to their bodies.

If DGP Kuldeep Khoda has judiciously rewarded the constable and others who later came to his rescue, he deserves an applause---not from the common man but from the politicians who have acted like blotting papers in taking privileges and comforts throughout their life from the state and the central governments. Interestingly, Syed Ali Shah Geelani is yet to issue a statement and a call for shutdown over the Qamarwai shootout. Opposition PDP too has withheld its trademark allegations. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq today called it a cold-blooded murder but two days after Shariq took the lead on all others.

In case Shariq has not made the allegation out of his affection for the young boy of Sopore, who was reportedly his relative, and has objectively told the truth, Chief Minister must either remove all the officials, from SHO to IGP and DGP, or at least order a judicial inquiry so as to pre-empt attempts of different players to create another Intifada, that could leave 112 more dead on the Valley streets. In case, Shariq is proved to be a lier and instigator of another Intifada, he must be forced to resign as MP and basic member of NC and facilitated to join Hurriyat Conference.

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