Day after visiting family of Kathua man whose suicide sparked uproar, Iltija Mufti says 2 of her PSOs suspended

After meeting the family, Iltija was allegedly confined at Circuit House in Jammu for over an hour by police personnel, sources said.

On Monday, she said authorities were quick to suspend her PSOs but there has been no action against the SHO of the police station where Makhan Din was allegedly tortured.

She said the SHO “has spread terror and extorted money from innocent youth”.

“The locals told me that those who fail to pay are labelled overground workers (a term used to describe militant sympathisers and supporters),” Iltija Mufti said.

She also criticised both Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Union Minister Jitendra Singh – the MP from Udhampur seat, under which Kathua is located – for not taking up the issue of the alleged custodial torture and suicide of Makhan Din.

Meanwhile, a group of lawyers, led by former J&K advocated general Mohammad Aslam Goni, on Monday demanded the immediate registration of an FIR and a CBI investigation into the matter.

Goni referred to the allegations of torture made by Makhan Din in the video before his death as a “dying declaration” and argued that it was sufficient for the registration of a criminal case against those he accused.

He called the magisterial probe ordered by the Kathua district administration as a “cover-up exercise”.

While the magisterial probe will be conducted by a naib-tehsildar, the police department has ordered a departmental enquiry to be conducted by the DIG of Jammu, Samba and Kathua range.

The former advocate general also questioned the credibility of such an in-house enquiry. Referring to several judgments of the Supreme Court on custodial torture, he said that only an impartial and independent probe would “unmask the larger gamut of the game”.