Author: Excelsior Special Correspondent
Publication: Daily Excelsior
Date: January 4, 2004
URL: http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/web1/04jan04/news.htm#2
Hindu family's guard personnel arrested,
suspended
In the umpteenth incident of its
kind in Jammu & Kashmir, J&K Police personnel, "guarding" a family
of the minority Hindu community, have surrendered their automatic weapons
to militants in Chadoura area of Budgam district. Five of the six Police
guards have been immediately arrested, put behind bars and placed under
suspension.
Informed sources told the EXCELSIOR
that a group of four to five militants in Army uniform appeared at a two-storeyed
building at Sogam, Chadoura, late last night. Without facing any resistance,
they reached straightaway in two rooms of the building housing J&K
Police guard personnel. While as Constable Mohammad Ashraf (199/Budgam)
was on leave and SPO Riyaz Ahmed (70/ SPO) was absent, others of the unit
were asked by the militants to surrender all of their weapons. The guard
personnel handed over four loaded SLRs to the militants.
On finding the Police personnel
submissive, militants did not harm them. They were also 'magnanimous' enough
to leave the "protected" Hindu family unharmed. Well after the militants
disappeared leisurely, head of the guard unit, Head Constable Munir Ahmed
(613/Bud) fired several shots from his carbine, which he had concealed
alongwith a wireless set.
DIG Central Kashmir, Mohammad Amin
Shah, and SP Budgam, R K Jalla, visited the spot today after they learned
that, once again, militants had disarmed the J&K Police guards. The
entire unit was placed under suspension. While as a Police team set out
to find the whereabouts of the absentee SPO, Riyaz Ahmed, all others of
the unit were arrested and detained for questioning. Sources said that
case FIR No: 4 of 2004 dated 3-01-2004 was registered against the militants
who snatched away the weapons. Chadoura Police Station also registered
case FIR No: 5 of 2004 dated 3-01-2004 against the guard personnel for
delinquency, carelessness and cowardice.
Enquiries by EXCELSIOR revealed
that the authorities had positioned 1:5 armed guard of District Police
Budgam at Sogam for the "protection" of a Punjabi Hindu family, comprising
seven members-4 men, 2 women and one child. This state subject family,
headed by a retired Police Inspector, Bikram Singh, has not migrated to
Jammu or other places in the wake of separatist militancy in 1989-90. Residents
looked relieved over the fact that the militants had harmed neither the
Police party nor the minority family.
Today's incident happended inspite
of the fact that authorities have put all the Police units, deployed for
the protection of the minority community, on the "maximum alert". There
were apprehensions among the official circles that militants could go for
a "major mischief" around the timing of the Saarc summit currently in progress
at Islamabad, Pakistan.
SP Budgam, R K Jalla, said that
stringent action would be initiated against the delinquent Police guard
after the preliminary inquiry was conducted and completed in the next two
days. Services of the guilty cops, he said, would be terminated after necessary
inquiry. He said that, at the same time, everybody in the District Police
showing gallantry and excellence in professionalism while combating criminals
and infusing a sense of security among the society, would be rewarded suitably.
He said that the deployment of the static guard units all over the district
was being reviewed.
In the past, militants had snatched
away the weapons of Police guards at the Dreygam shrine of Sheikh-ul-Aalam
Sheikh Noor-ud-din Noorani, Narbal bridge and a few other places in Budgam
district. It has also been observed, of late, that Police guards protecting
the houses of some religious leaders and political activists have begun
the extra-curricular activity of capturing wood- poachers and extorting
from them huge amounts of a money during night in Budgam and Beerwah localities.
