Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Oct 18: "Arnob Goswami can not dictate to National Conference", a bitterly stung Farooq Abdullah grumbled at the Times Now TV correspondent at Nawai-e-Subah, headquarters of his National Conference and the venue of a press conference in 2008. In a prime time programme overnight, the television anchor had been stoically critical of the NC leader Dr Mustafa Kamaal's act of attending the funeral prayers of the two militants who had got killed in an encounter with security forces at Palhalan village in Pattan Assembly segment of Baramulla district.
Journalists from Srinagar to Delhi had viewed it as a marked shift in the NC policy vis-à-vis the militants. Claiming to be the victim of the "Pakistan-backed terrorism", the NC under Farooq Abdullah's leadership had maintained that over 2,000 of its workers and leaders had been eliminated by the militants only for the party's secular ideology. In fact the Nawai-e-Subah halls were - and still are - decorated with scores of the slain NC leaders' portraits and pictures. The victims include dozens of former ministers and legislators including one-time Minister Ghulam Hassan Bhat of Dooru, who was blown into pieces in an IED blast, and Mushtaq Ahmad Lone, who was gunned down at an election rally in Kupwara in September 2002.
By all interpretations it was news when someone of the Dr Mustafa Kamaal's stature chose to attend the Namaaz-e-Janazah of the perceived killers of his party's over 2,000 workers and leaders.
People of the same Palhalan village gathered on Srinagar-Muzaffarabad highway after the congregational prayers on the auspicious day of Eid-ul-Azha on last Wednesday and did the most inhuman act. No innocent civilian or a separatist activist or even an armed militant had been killed by Police or security forces. There was no allegation of rape, molestation, arrest or confiscation of property.
On sighting a Police bus, the mob began shouting pro-Azadi, pro-Pakistan and anti-India slogans. As the bus, driving from Police Control Room Srinagar to Police Training School Sheeri, Baramulla, reached the Palhalan crossing, hundreds of the residents targeted it with a shower of stones. Driver Kanwalnain Singh, who belonged to a poor family of Singhpora village, was hit straight in his head. Even after he died and eight of his uniformed colleagues escaped with injuries, the stone pelters did not relent. They continued their assault in a Taliban style, to ensure Kanwalnain's death. Singh died, leaving behind his elderly mother, a widow, and two young children.
The carnage at Palhalan was reminiscent of the September 2010 killing of a Sikh constable at Budgam. Some separatist activists drove their Tavera fast, hitting the constable fatally in front of Police Station. In a desperate attempt, he was rushed to the hospital by his colleagues in a Gypsy. A mob attacked the Gypsy. Though three constables and the driver managed to escape, the critically injured Sikh constable was lynched to death on the hospital premises.
Both, Dr Kamaal as well as his nephew, Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah have watched the murder at Palhalan as mute spectators. As nobody expects Congress, BJP, NPP, CPI (M), PDP - even the most hyper of the India-bashers Engineer Rashid - to react, Dr Abdullah's party seems to have paralysed under the craze of competitive secessionism in the State.
The only condemnation by late this evening had poured in from the J&K PCC chief Prof Saif-ud-Din Soz. In fact, most of the Kashmiri politicians, who outsmart each other on flimsiest of the human rights abuse by Police and security forces, stand already exposed. None of them had even condemned the death of an 11-day-old infant in the lap of his mother when a group of stone pelters assaulted the residents of Rafiabad at Baramulla for their audacity to ignore the radical separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani's call for shutdown four years ago.
Omar Abdullah, who has been habitual of tweeting on the non-events like a Kashmiri cricketer's non-inclusion in a playing team, has also gone by the expediency and remained silent on the rule of lawlessness at Palhalan. His Twitter wall is blank. Had he decided to sit indoors like a helpless politician, it would have been acceptable to many in the State. But, the brave Chief Minister drove all the way to SKICC on Friday and spoke on "Rule of Law" at a high profile judicial conference. He should have rather spoken on "Rule of Lawlessness" in his own regime! |
