Mehbooba Mufti stopped from meeting families of 3 civilians killed in Poonch, holds protest

Poonch/Jammu, Dec 30 (PTI) Police on Saturday stopped PDP president Mehbooba Mufti from meeting the families of three people found dead a day after being picked up for questioning by the Army following a terror attack in Poonch last week, her colleagues said.

However, the former chief minister later met some of the people who suffered injuries allegedly after being picked up by the Army and were undergoing treatment at a hospital in Surankote.

Director General of Police R R Swain said the job of the law enforcement agency is to see that the visit of anyone is not leveraged or used to fan dissatisfaction as “we will ourselves try to correct the situation and take remedial measures”.

On December 21, four soldiers were killed and three others injured in an ambush on two Army vehicles by terrorists in Poonch’s Surankote area. Some people were picked up by the Army for questioning later. Three of them were found dead and five were injured.

Mufti, accompanied by party colleagues, was stopped by police at Buffliaz enroute to the Topa Peer village of the deceased civilians but managed to break the police cordon in an attempt to meet the victim families.

After walking for several kilometers, she was again stopped at Dera Ki Gali. She Mufti staged a sit-in for over two hours before she was forcibly taken to Surankote where she later visited a hospital and enquired about the condition of the injured undergoing treatment there, the party leaders said.

Talking to reporters during the sit-in, Mehbooba demanded that she be allowed to visit the village and questioned the decision of the administration to place restrictions on her while allowing Jammu and Kashmir BJP president Ravinder Raina and other leaders to meet the victims’ families recently.

“BJP president, NC leaders and others are free but we are not allowed on the pretext that there is a threat…they don’t want us to visit the families to share their pain and heal their wounds. There is something else which they want to hide,” she alleged.

She also alleged that her party workers were dragged into police vehicles.

She said they were not going to the village to create any trouble but wanted to meet the families whose children were killed.

At a press conference in Jammu, the DGP, responding to a question about the visit of Mufti and National Conference president Farooq Abdullah to Poonch, said, “We are mindful that people will go there to express their opinion or to express sympathy. Our job is to essentially see that this is not leveraged or used to further fan dissatisfaction or things like that.”

“There are incidents happening and when a battle has started and some type of combat is there…on our own we will ourselves try to correct situation, take remedial measures and at the same time we will be mindful that this is not leveraged in a malicious manner,” he said, adding politics is part of democratic space and freedom of expression and “we will decide on case to case basis”.
The Jammu and Kashmir administration last week announced compensation and jobs to the families of the dead civilians and said the medico-legal formalities were conducted and legal action in this matter has been initiated by the appropriate authority.

The Army has ordered a thorough internal investigation into the death of the three civilians and said it was committed to extending full support and cooperation in the conduct of the probe.