Former legislator and Awami Ittehad party (AIP) supremo Er Rasheed on Tuesday said the governor Satya Pal Malik and his advisor should own the responsibility of seven civilian deaths in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district over the weekend.
Addressing a news conference in Srinagar after his release from detention, Rasheed said the governor and his advisors must own the killings of seven civilians in forces’ firing in Pulwama on Saturday.
“While security agencies are duty bound to work under directions of civil administration but unfortunately the divisional and district administration has become mouth pieces of security agencies,” he said.
Rasheed said that the “fake’ inquiries and condolences from the administration are in itself a confession of guilt.
“It is strange that on one hand that everyone from army chief to Home Minister to governor was justifying the killings by blaming the slain civilians and calling every stone pelter a terrorist and every pro-active Kashmiri an OGW of militants, but on the other hand each of them is condemning the incident, asking for inquiries and showing sympathy with the families of those butchered in Pulwama,” he said.
Kashmiris, he added, were fighting for a political resolution to the dispute and need peace more than anybody else. “There are no Veerapans in Kashmir,” he said while referring to infamous sandalwood smuggler shot dead by the forces in Karnataka. “People in Kashmir are fighting for the right of self-determination.”
Justifying the “Badami Bagh chalo’ call of the Joint Resistance Leadership – an amalgam of separatist outfits – he said that it was the “most civilised way” to protest against the massacre in Pulwama.
Seven civilians were killed after the government forces opened fire on protesters in Sarnoo village of Pulwama on Saturday following a gunfight that left three militants and a soldier dead.
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