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| Pirates killed 2 auto drivers for Rs 1300 | | Yasin Malik’s kin was killed by teenage corsairs: Police | |
ET Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Apr 5: Srinagar Police today claimed that both the auto-drivers, whose death had led to massive demonstrations in the capital city and created pandemonium during the first ever session of Legislative Assembly, had been actually killed by ordinary teenage corsairs. All and sundry in the state from human rights activists to mainstream politicians had held security forces and counter-insurgents responsible for these ‘cold-blooded murders’.
Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Srinagar, Syed Afadul Hassan Mujtaba, revealed at a news conference today that Police had arrested both the culprits involved in the twin murder of two auto drivers and completed the investigation in less than two months. He produced both the accused before media and said that challan was being filed before a court in the sensational double-murder that had occurred in identical circumstances in Bemina outskirts of the capital city within a fortnight in the month of February.
While sharing findings of the Police investigation with mediapersons, SSP said that an auto-driver, namely Fida Hussain Bhat S/o Irshad Ahmed Bhat R/o Bemina was found dead in Bemina-Zainakote belt in the evening on February 9th. On February 23, another auto-driver, namely Shabir Ahmed Sheikh S/o Ghulam Ahmed Sheikh R/o Maisuma, presently Bemina, was found killed in identical circumstances. Both appeared to have been overpowered and strangled to death.
He said that during the course of investigation, Police succeeded in seizing the mobile phone of Shabir Ahmed Sheikh. With the help of this phone, Police got certain technical clues that led to identification, arrest and interrogation of two accused. Both the detained teenagers admitted that they had waylaid the drivers and killed them with the purpose of looting their day’s earnings. They disclosed that they had strangled to death Fida Hussain and looted cash worth Rs 600 from his pocket. According to their disclosure, they had similarly killed Shabir Ahmed and looted Rs 700 from his possession.
SSP said that the circumstances, timing, weapon used (muffler), profession of the victims as well as residence and age of the killers were identical in both the cases. Both had been stopped by two 17-year-old youth of Khushipora village, who posed themselves as commuters, and killed while using a muffler. On both days, it was raining and time was late in the evening. Killers of the auto-drivers have been identified as Barkat Ali Rather S/o Mohammad Akbar Rather and Rauf Ahmed Khanday S/o Mohammad Muzaffar Khanday, residents of Khushipora, Zainakot. Dead bodies had been recovered from deserted spots, in close vicinity of Army’s Divisional Headquarters of Kilo Force (Shariefabad) and Headquarters of RR 02 Battalion.
Since the twin murder had occurred around the timing of the first session of the new Legislative Assembly and both the dead bodies had been recovered from the periphery of two Army installations, Kashmir valley had witnessed days of shutdown, demonstrations and stone-pelting. The participants invariably leveled allegations that the days of killing of innocent people by security forces and their local counter-insurgent helpers had returned with return of National Conference (NC) to the power after 6 years.
Large number of MLAs, particularly those from the Opposition PDP, had raised an uproar over these killings in Legislative Assemblies for several days with the demand that Government should arrest the killers and punish them. Since one of the victims, Shabir Ahmed Sheikh, happened to be a relative of the JKLF Chairman, Mohammad Yasin Malik, most of the human rights activists and politicians—both separatist, mainstream and opposition---had prominently contributed to the furore.
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