'Militants could have warned, why kill’: Mother of SPO Kulwant Singh killed in Shopian // Kashmir civilian killings: ‘We were only bystanders… They could have shot in the air to disperse crowd’
Early Friday, 12-year-old Yudhveer was woken up by loud voices in his home. He
saw his grand-mother requesting suspected militants not to take away his father,
SPO Kulwant Singh. “Everyone pleaded, but they did not listen,”
says Yudhveer, sitting next to his father’s body outside their house in the
afternoon. “I don’t know why they killed him. He never did any wrong.” Singh (35) was among
the three police personnel abducted and killed by suspected militants in South
Kashmir’s Shopian district on Friday morning. At his house in
Batgund village, villagers and relatives are grieving. His wife, who has gone
to Jammu, has not been told about the incident.
“My son told me he was not working with police
anymore,” says Singh’s mother Pushpa Devi. “He was running a shop in Kulgam. If
I had known he was with the police, I would have told him to announce his
resignation on the internet.” Her family is the only Rajput family in the
village, Pushpa tells The Indian Express. “We never left this village because
the people were always there for us. I am speechless today. Who will look after
the family now?” She says that two
militants entered their home in the morning and asked Singh to go with them.
Half-an-hour later, the family was informed that the body had been found in a
nearby village.
Opposite Singh’s house
is the residence of Firdous Ahmad Kuchey, who was posted at Kakapora railway
station as a follower. Parents and relatives had gathered there to mourn the
death of Kuchey (28). “They snatched my world from me. They could have warned him.
But they killed my innocent son,” says his mother Fatima Begum. Fatima says her son
came home on Thursday to announce his resignation at the mosque on Friday. “He
was working in a railway station. How was he a threat to anyone?” she adds. Kuchey is survived by
his parents, wife, two children and three brothers. He joined the police force
five years ago.
Meanwhile, the nearby
village of Kapren is grieving for Nisar Ahmad Dhobi, a selection grade
constable. “I folded my hands and requested them to leave my husband. But they
didn’t listen. He was everything to us, we are shattered,” says his wife
Rukhsana. Dhobi (38) is survived
by his parents, wife and two children. At Batgund village, shops have been closed since morning. Most villagers refuse to talk about
the killings openly, but say they are disturbed. “Today’s incident is the
result of happenings in South Kashmir - a war between militants and security
forces,” says a villager. As the coffins reach
the villages, a pall of gloom descends. No security personnel are visible on
the roads leading to the villages.
‘We were only bystanders.. They could have shot in the air to disperse crowd’
Outside the emergency
operation theatre at Srinagar’s Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital, a
21-year-old in a dark phiran anxiously checks his cellphone for news from
Sirnoo village in Pulwama, where seven people were killed in protests after an
encounter with security forces. His cousin is among the 11 injured who were
wheeled into the SMHS Hospital.
Speaking of the events
of Saturday morning, he said hundreds of villagers had gathered as news of the
deaths of three local militants spread through the area before Internet was
shut down. The angry villagers surrounded a casper — a mine-resistant armoured
vehicle — of the Army. “It was just after
10.30 am… Army vehicles were leaving the encounter site… The soldiers sitting
inside the casper opened fire on the crowd without any warning shots. They did
not fire in the air to disperse the crowds,” he said. Police,
however, said that the “crowd came dangerously close to the encounter site
while the operation was on”. The death toll at Sirnoo by the end of the day was
11 — seven civilians, three local militants and an Army man. The police statement
makes no mention of how the civilians were injured... read more:
