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| After eight-month-long politics of apology, CM praises Army, Minister attacks Hurriyat | | | AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Aug 6: Omar Abdullah’s National Conference-led coalition government seems to be reviewing its 8-month-long politics of apology as Chief Minister for the first time today sang paeans for Army in Rajouri and his Ministerial colleague Ali Mohammad Sagar made frontal attacks on the separatist Hurriyat leaders in Kupwara, calling them 5-star jihadis and merchants of death.
Parallel to Omar Abdullah’s showering of praises on Army in Rajouri---first time since he became Chief Minister on January 5th this year---NC’s firebrand leader and Minister of Rural Development, Ali Mohammad Sagar, today went no-holds-barred on the separatist Hurriyat leaders as he berated them as 5-star jihadis and held them responsible for 20 years of bloodshed and destruction in Kashmir. Addressing public meetings at Drugmulla and Gulgam in Kupwara district, Sagar alleged that the Valley’s separatist leaders had, over the years, developed ‘strong vested interest’ in bloodshed and mayhem that, according to him, had turned insignificant political activists into millionaires and ensured for them a luxurious lifestyle.
“They live in 5-star hotels and issue calls of shutdown on small, ordinary matters. For a poor, ordinary Kashmiri, they have retarded economic development. But, for themselves they have made considerable fortunes and acquired super-luxury cars worth millions of Rupees. What have they brought to the state in 20 years other than gun culture and imported wives and cars? They can not sleep until there is a death or boom of guns. They are the merchants of death and destruction and enemies of the poor Kashmiris”, Sagar said of the separatist leaders.
Known for his hard posturing against militants and separatist leaders during Dr Farooq Abdullah’s regime from 1996 to 2002, Sagar, like Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, had remained apologetic on each and every issue of the separatist sentiment in the last eight months. Finding themselves at the receiving end of mass criticism over less than a dozen of the incidents of human rights abuse, Omar Abdullah and his senior party colleagues had restricted themselves to playing second fiddle to the separatist politicians in the last eight months.
In the matter of alleged rape-cum-murder of two young women in Shopian on May 29th this year, Omar Abdullah’s government had outsmarted the separatist High Court Bar Association by taking a tougher stand against four Police officials and hiring the country’s most expensive lawyers against hefty payments to ensure that none of the detained Police officials got bail from any court of law. In the matter of killing of four demonstrators in Baramulla, Chief Minister had, in advance of magisterial inquiry, ordered vacation of paramilitary CRPF from most of the areas in North Kashmir. As a consequence of such steps and posturing, Omar Abdullah had neutralized the criticism of separatist politicians and intelligentsia but a perceptible section of armed forces and Police had begun complaining of demoralization.
Significantly, today itself, J&K Police killed the current year’s first Pakistani militant, Chhota Saad alias Umair in custody in Sopore area of Baramulla district, hours after his revealing to interrogators how he and his colleagues had planned and carried out the execution of a lady SPO’s mother, Reshm Jan of Kupwara, in Model Town of Sopore on 16th of June this year. It was after a pretty long time that Police doled out the story of a militant getting killed in the “militant ambush” while leading armed forces to his hideouts.
In his speeches in Kupwara, Sagar also lashed out on the opposition PDP Patron and former Home Minister of India, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, holding him responsible for betraying India to satisfy his personal ego. He alleged that Mufti was directly responsible for Mirwaiz Maulvi Mohammad Farooq’s assassination on May 21, 1990, when as the Union Home Minister he was aware of the cleric-politician’s threat perception and had not deliberately provided any security cover to his life and residence. He said that the champion of today’s human rights and advocate of the withdrawal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act had got as many as 1150 militants eliminated during three years of his government. Sagar said that Mufti was simply hoodwinking the Kashmiris with his pseudo-separatist posturing.
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