Journalism of Courage
THE J&K administration on Thursday exhumed the bodies of the two civilians killed in Monday’s shootout with police and ordered a magisterial inquiry, after protests over the incident spread across the Valley.
Till late on Thursday night, the bodies of Altaf Bhat, a businessman, and Dr Mudassir Gul, a dentist, had not been handed over to the families.
Four people had been killed in Monday’s encounter in Hyderpora, Srinagar, and buried quickly by police in Handwara, 70 km away. Family members of three of them (one was allegedly a Pakistani) contested police claims that they were either militants or had militant links.
The protests across Kashmir were further fuelled by police forcibly ending an agitation by the family members of the civilians killed in Srinagar on Wednesday midnight demanding their bodies.
On Thursday, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha said there would be a magisterial inquiry into the shootout, with a report to be submitted in 15 days. “The J-K administration reiterates its commitment (to) protecting lives of innocent civilians and it will ensure there is no injustice,” a statement by the LG’s office said. The exhumation was carried out in the evening in the presence of senior district officials.
Bhat and Gul’s families said they had prepared graves for their burial in their ancestral graveyards. Police sources said the bodies were likely to be handed over only after midnight, to prevent a large funeral and any law and order issue.
Police had accused Bhat, the owner of the building where the shootout took place, and his tenant Gul as “over ground workers”, and said the other two killed were “militants”, identified as Amir Magray, a resident of Gool in Ramban, Jammu, and a Pakistani, Bilal bhai.
No call has been made yet on whether Magray’s body would be exhumed too. Magray’s father Abdul Latief Magray, a state bravery award winner, told The Indian Express Wednesday that his son worked as an office staff with Gul. “How can my son be a militant as I fought against them during peak militancy in the area?” said the 58-year-old.
The policy of not returning bodies of militants to families was finalised by the J&K Police towards the beginning of the pandemic last year, with intelligence officials raising concerns over big militant funerals. Since then, it is the first time that police have allowed the exhumation of bodies, despite demands being raised several times in the past.
The District Magistrate, Srinagar, announced that Kashmir Administrative Service officer Khursheed Ahmad Shah will conduct the inquiry into the Hyderpora shootout, looking into the “facts and circumstances related to the incident and the cause of death”.
Police officers, including IG, Kashmir, Vijay Kumar, met the families of Bhat and Gul during the day on Thursday. Bhat’s niece Saima Bhat said after the meeting that the IGP had told them they were considering returning his body.
On Wednesday midnight, before police forcibly removed the families of Gul and Bhat from a protest site, electricity to the area was snapped. Amidst sub-zero temperatures in Srinagar, the families carried on the protest with car headlights.
A relative of Gul said: “Police came to us, asked us to wind up the protest and promised that the bodies would be returned. But we asked them to give this in writing or announce it before the media. They refused to do it and left. Sometime later, they returned, dragged us and pushed us into a police vehicle. They said they had orders to clear the protest site.”
In a 2014 judgment in a PUCL vs State of Maharashtra case, the Supreme Court had held that a magisterial inquiry “must invariably” be held in all cases of death “in the course of police action”. “The next of kin of the deceased must invariably be associated in such (an) inquiry,” it said.
