‘Complete failure, should have been sacked by now’: Mehbooba Mufti slams J-K DGP over terror attacks, says he works on communal lines

“Unfortunately, there is no accountability. By now, the heads should have rolled…the DG should have been sacked by now,” Mufti said, condemning the killing of four soldiers in a gunfight in Jammu’s Doda on Monday night. “It has been a complete failure since the last 32 months, especially since he has been made the DG,” the former J-K chief minister added.

On Monday, speaking at a function at IIM Jammu, DGP Swain had accused mainstream political parties of facilitating Pakistan’s infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir civil society, the first such statement by a serving police chief.

“Pakistan successfully infiltrated all important aspects of civil society, thanks to so-called mainstream and regional politics in the Valley. There is ample evidence to show that many had owned the art of running with the hare and hunting with hounds, which left both the common man and the security bewildered, frightened and confused. Visiting the homes of killed terrorists and expressing sympathy in public was normal,” Swain had said.

Mufti said that the DGP Swain is busier politicking than doing his job as the police chief. “He has been more busy fixing things politically. His job is to break the PDP, harass the people, threaten them, harass journalists and businessmen…He is a fixer. We don’t need a fixer here, we need a DGP,” she said.

“We had DGPs from outside the state as well in the past, they have done good work. He (Swain) is working on communal lines. Employees are being terminated in the name of corruption. Who are they? They are from the majority community. You (Swain) have communalised the police,” Mufti said. “He (Swain) has alienated the majority community. He is treating all of them as Pakistanis,” she added.

Mufti questioned who had stopped DGP Swain from acting against the militants, especially as the Centre has been directly ruling Jammu and Kashmir for the last six years. “He (Swain) should know that the party for which he is working, their ideologue, (former) deputy prime minister L K Advani talked to them (separatists) who they have put into the jails,” she said. “For the last six years, the Centre has been running the government here. The Hurriyat leadership has either died or is behind bars. But you (Swain) have waged a war against your own people, you have weaponised passports, you have weaponised verification, you have weaponised agencies,” she added.

Mufti said Engineer Rashid’s win from the north Kashmir Lok Sabha seat is a slap to Swain and the security agencies. “Your biggest failure is in north Kashmir. As is said, I don’t know what case is pending against Engineer Rashid Sahib, if it is like other fake cases – but he has won the election in the name of a plebiscite, on the basis of such speeches. People rejected Omar Sahib, Sajad Sahib,” she said.

Swain had referred to the alleged rape and murder of two women in Shopian in 2009. “He (Swain) is talking through the barrel of a gun… you are talking about Asiya and Neelofar. If I had handed over the Kathua case (rape-murder of a girl) to CBI, they all would have been free. I stood firm and said my police are competent enough,” she said.

Apart from Mufti, People’s Conference chief Sajad Lone also took a dig at Swain. “The comments made by the DG J-K Police pertaining to mainstream parties are inappropriate, to say the least. Even in a basic rudimentary functioning democracy such utterances by a serving police officer would not have been tolerated,” Lone posted on X.

“Such statements by serving officers are an indication of the disdain and the contempt for anything remotely pertaining to democracy. Such a sad state of affairs and even sadder is the fact that the script writers of this sad state of affairs take pride in having brought J and K to this level,” he added.