Men who shouted for Azadi, attacked cop were from NC

CM orders release of Bar chief, declines to relent on the ‘enemies within’

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

JAMMU, Apr 11: A group of lathi-wielding youth, who shouted for Azadi and attacked a Constable of Jammu & Kashmir Police ruthlessly on Srinagar-Baramulla last year, have turned out to be sons of the members of ruling National Conference (NC). Even as a senior NC leader and Minister applied maximum possible pressure for the release of the cop-attackers, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has made it clear that he would release detainees of Hurriyat and PDP but not the “enemies within”.

Authoritative sources revealed to Early Times that men in the violent mob, who acted on the separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s call of “Sopore Chalo” on June 28^th, 2010, and attacked a Constable of J&K Police near Hokersar Wetland Reserve, have turned out to be members of the ruling NC. Almost all of the accused have surfaced as residents of Zainakadal and other downtown localities who came from the NC families.

The key accused in FIR No: 159 of 2010, booked by Police Station Parimpora, Umar Hamid Hanga, has turned out to be the son of a senior NC activist and right hand man of a Cabinet Minister. The Minister’s Azadi shouting followers had attacked the Constable within 24 hours of the Minister’s publicly made charge that the Indian paramilitary CRPF was an “unbridled force” in Kashmir.

Highly placed sources in the state Home Department said that the Minister had applied “maximum possible pressure” to get the accused released but Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who also happens to be the Minister incharge Home, had declined to relent on the “enemies within”.

Sources said that Police had arrested as many as 29 persons on the charges of attacking the Police constable and resorting to violence with an anti-national agenda in case FOR No: 159 of 2010. Six of the key accused, namely Umar Hamid Hanga S/o Abdul Hamid Hanga R/o Zainakadal, Murtaza Manzoor Panzoo S/o Manzoor Ahmed Panzoo R/o Maharaj Gunj, Farooq Ahmed Mir S/o Ghulam Mohammad Mir R/o Parimpora, Muzaffar Jan Itoo S/o Mohammad Yousuf Itoo R/o Safakadal, Shariq Lateef Bhat S/o Mohammad Lateef Bhat R/o Mustafa Abad Zainakot and Mohammad Maqbool Sofi S/o Mohammad Abdullah Sofi R/o Soura, have been detained under Public Safety Act (PSA) and detained at different jails in Jammu.

These sources said that Srinagar District Police had completed its investigation and a challan was being produced separately in a court of law against the arsonists, who nearly killed a Constable, but some of the key accused had been detained under PSA to prevent move of the defence to get them released.

In its exhaustive dossier, Police had attached explicit video clips of the attack on the Constable besides call detail records of the accused as well as their tower locations at the time of the incident. Sources said that in view of strong material evidence against the accused, Chief Minister refused to relent and desired that the investigation be completed and the trial conducted in a routine court of law.

Interestingly, a number of NC’s politicians, including Ministers, have been holding the separatist Hurriyat Conference and the mainstream opposition party, PDP, responsible for staging last year’s street turbulence and violent demonstrations.

Officials had no hesitation in sharing details of the ruling party activists’ involvement in the incidents of arson and separatist demonstrations but they sought to make it clear that there was no organizational support to these urchins. They refused to be on record with the argument that they were not authorized to speak to media.

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