MHA asks DP to spare J&K students to protect BJP’s possible alliance with PDP

IB asked to profile as Kashmiri participants of JNU demonstrations

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

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JAMMU, Feb 15: Even as the Intelligence Bureau (IB) has begun profiling all the Kashmiris---masked as well as unmasked---who participated in last week’s and today’s pro-Azadi demonstrations at the campus of Jawahar Lal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, Government of India has, in a significant development, directed Delhi Police to avoid detaining any student from Jammu and Kashmir “for the moment”. This is said to be an attempt to protect the BJP’s formative alliance with PDP for the government formation in Jammu and Kashmir.

Sources in New Delhi told STATE TIMES that officials of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs communicated verbally to senior officials of Delhi Police that none of the Kashmiris, particularly the students, even if found involved in organising or attending the recent anti-India demonstrations, should not be immediately booked in any FIR or arrested. Reasons behind withholding the action have not been specified. However, sources added, it was being done only to protect churning out of BJP’s possible coalition with Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP in Jammu and Kashmir.

It is believed that the Police action against the Kashmiri students could around this crucial time, ahead of Parliament’s Budget session, could make it harder for the PDP to form the new government with the BJP.

A middle-rung DP officer questioned two Kashmiris, including a student’s brother, in Hauz Khas area of New Delhi on Monday. He too made it clear to them that the students from J&K were “only under surveillance”. During the conversation, he revealed to the duo that the DP had been asked to immediately book and detain the students and others from all other States if found involved in the anti-India demonstrations. “Regarding the J&K students, we have been directed not to book or arrest anybody as it could botch up the BJP’s alliance with the PDP”, one of the DP officers clarified to the two students but recorded their particulars and whereabouts with a caution that they should avoid visiting that area for a few days.

“He behaved well took our particulars”, one of the two students told STATE TIMES.

Knowledgeable sources said that the IB had been, nonetheless, directed to profile “each and every person, particularly the Kashmiris, students or otherwise” who had organised or attended the JNU Students Union’s anti-India demonstrations at the University campus besides at Press Club of India. The IB, according to these sources, has started an extensive exercise in coordination with the organisation’s wings in Srinagar, Jammu, Hyderabad and New Delhi.

An exercise is underway to first identify around half-a-dozen masked men who, on Monday, shouted explicit slogans in favour of the Hizbul Mujahideen’s Kashmir operations chief Burhan Muzaffar Wani, Hurriyat Conference, Afzal Guru, Maqbool Bhat and the Kashmiri militants and separatists in general.

The masked men also shouted by name against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former Chief Ministers Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Umar Abdullah besides the PDP President Mehbooba Mufti telling them that the Kashmiris would not rest until “snatching away azadi on gun point” from India. Followed by an enthusiastic student gathering, including some female students covering their heads with scarves, the masked men shouted that one Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat would arise from each Kashmiri family and that the war with India would continue till India’s destruction and fragmentation into pieces.

According to the sources, at least seven of the unmasked participants have been found as “persons of doubtful background”. In an interim report submitted by IB to the MHA, a JNU student from Kashmir Omar has been described as a “Jaish-e-Mohammad sympathiser” who, according to the agency, had visited Pakistan and met key functionaries of the militant organisation involved in alleged terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament. He, according to the report, is a close associate of the JNU student leader Omar Khalid.

Even the Delhi University teacher Syed Abdul Rehman Geelani, who had been exonerated in the Parliament attack case, has been put under scanner.

Meanwhile, the BJP is understood to have advised its emissaries to “go slow” in their secretly held talks with the PDP as the Central ruling party has been cornered by the Leftists and the Congress party publicly on continuing a crackdown on the Afzal Guru sympathisers on hand and forming the government in J&K with the pro-Afzal PDP on the other hand. PDP has been alleging that awarding death sentence to Guru was “travesty of justice” and hanging him to death from amongst a long row of convicts selectively was “political”. It has publicly demanded return of Guru’s mortal remains to the family.

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