Hurriyat demands independent probe into Anantnag gunfight
After the People’s Democratic Party, the Hurriyat Conference led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq also raised questions on Sunday’s ‘gunfight’ in Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag district, in which a ‘hybrid terrorist’, who was in police custody, was killed. The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) urged rights organisations to raise their voice and asked for a probe by independent agencies into such killings.
On Sunday, police claimed that a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) hybrid terrorist, Sajjad Tantray, who was accompanying a police party for identifying a hideout, was killed during an encounter with terrorists in Cheki Duddo area of Bijbehara in Anantnag when the hiding terrorists opened fire. Tantray was arrested earlier this month in the attack on two non-local labourers, of whom one succumbed on November 18.
“APHC fervently appeals to all conscientious people of India and outside, and rights organisations to take note of these killings and raise their voice, and asks for probe into these killings by independent agencies,” the Hurriyat said in the statement.
“This is the second such custodial killing in just over a month in south Kashmir as another youth labelled a ‘hybrid militant’, Imran Bashir Ganaie, was arrested and later killed in a similar fashion, while he was taken to identify a ‘militant hideout,” the separatist amalgam alleged.
“Labelling young boys as so-called ‘hybrid militants’ , ‘overground militant workers’, ‘militant sympathisers’ and then arresting them with impunity under draconian laws has become a routine in Kashmir. Thousands of young men arrested from all parts of J&K in such a manner, are languishing in jails without trial,” it said.
On Sunday, PDP president Mehbooba Mufti questioned the killing of Sajad Tantray in the encounter saying it was another such case with no accountability.
“Another Kashmiri accused of being a hybrid militant is killed in police custody. The same story is repeated where an alleged militant is taken to a hideout and is subsequently shot at in mysterious circumstances. No accountability whatsoever,” she said in a tweet.
On October 19, the police said that hybrid terrorist Imran Bashir Ganie of Hermain Shopian, who was accompanying a search party of security forces for identifying a hideout, was injured when militants fired on the search party. He was taken to a hospital where he was declared dead.
