Family members of Altaf Ahmad Bhat, Dr Mudassir Gul and Aamir Magray – three of the four persons killed in controversial Hyderpora encounter – have contested the special investigation team investigations even as Valley politicians pressed for a judicial inquiry.
Close relatives of building owner Altaf Ahmad Bhat questioned the SIT claim citing a post-mortem report indicating that Bhat’s death was solely due to firearm wounds and not any other injury in a “crossfire”.
“There were clear torture marks on Bhat sahib’s body and he was bleeding from his mouth even on the day when he was exhumed and buried at his ancestral graveyard. There were too many stains and we had to change his shroud,” a family member said. “His head had been bludgeoned from the back and the wound was deep,” they said.
The SIT chief Sujit Kumar had claimed Bhat was killed in a crossfire after Pakistani militant Bilal Bhai – the fourth person to be killed in the encounter – had used him as a human shield to flee from the building. The doctor who conducted the postmortem told SIT there were clear firearm injuries and no other blunt-force impact mark. Kumar had on Monday said Bhat had hidden information about the presence of a foreign militant. Asked why did the police send Bhat inside the building, Kumar said he had volunteered to search the building.
However, Bhat’s family members contested the report and have questioned why the police decided to risk Bhat’s life and had not stopped him once they had information about militant presence in the building. The family maintained they were told by 40 to 50 witnesses – who were at a nearby motorcycle showroom – that Bhat was taken thrice inside the building by police to show them around. “Police takes civilians out of a building where militants are holed up and not the other way around,” a family member said, adding it was hard to believe hundreds of security men could not save one or two civilians from a militant.
The family was charged for not providing rent documents by Kumar. Bhat’s family, however, said the notice for the documents was first issued on December 13. “We did hand over some papers. The building was sealed and handed over to family only a few days back, we tried to look inside his chamber but shockingly found the locker open and papers scattered. Since Bhat is no more, we are trying to locate more documents. All along, we have cooperated with the SIT,” the family said.
Family members of Dr Mudassir Gul too rejected the SIT findings. “My husband was a doctor by profession; why would he put his family, little daughter, wife, parents at stake for nothing. His character is an open book and his friends and me, as his wife, know what kind of a person was he?” Dr Mudassir’s wife Humaira Gul told news portal Free Press Kashmir.
“Police must show me the CCTV footage where Gul ferries foreign militant Bilal Bhai. This is a place where hundreds of people come and go daily and they are saying there was a foreign militant living for a month,” she said.
“There is a bunker on the opposite side, an armed vehicle parked there all the time. It cannot be digested that a foreign militant was residing there for a month,” she added.
She said she has photographs that show he had marks on his neck, which cannot be received by falling. “This is suspicious, and I cannot digest the story.”
The family of Amir Magray, too, had earlier questioned the police and have said Magray was not a militant but an office assistant at Dr Gul’s office. Magray’s father, a known counterinsurgent who killed a militant with a stone many years ago in his village in Ramban near Jammu, had contended the police claim saying he had gone to Srinagar for earning his livelihood. “How could he be a militant,” his father had told News18.
The Special Investigation Team of Jammu and Kashmir Police probing the Hyderpora encounter on Monday said all four people killed had terror links. The SIT had said Bilal Bhai and Magray were terrorists, Magray a hybrid terrorist, while Bhat had concealed information about Bilal’s presence in his building. On Tuesday, police said the SIT is still investigating the case, and it asked people to provide evidence so that the investigation be concluded.
Meanwhile, police reacting to the statements of some Kashmiri politicians on SIT inquiry threatened to start “appropriate penal provisions under the law if they tried to put speculative statements to create provocation, rumour, fear and alarm among people.”
Almost all Kashmir political parties and leaders have criticised the SIT report, calling it a “cover-up to absolve people who participated in a botched up operation.”
Read all the Latest India News here
Comments
0 comment