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| Sopore youth's custodial murder must weigh heavily on Omar's conscience | | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Aug 2: The custodial death of a youth in Sopore town on 31st July has sent shock waves throughout the state. Nazim Rashid, 26, was killed while in the custody of police----who are supposed to be the custodians of people's life, liberty and property!
What is worse is that Nazim Rashid was the son of a former police officer of Baramulla district. This fact has largely gone unnoticed in the scores of media reports those were carried by various national and international newspapers, television channels, wire services etc.
It is very unusual for even cannibals to eat their own children and here in our midst we have a situation where the son of a police officer has been killed by his own colleagues. Shocking as well as disgusting.
There is a proverb in Punjabi which says even the witch leaves three houses before claiming her next victim. Policemen who interrogated Nazim Rashid to a point where even death of the youth was overlooked must be made to pay for their most foul act. There is no act more foul, more shocking and more unpardonable than the death of a human being at the hands of a fellow human being.
The official version is that the youth had been picked up for interrogation following allegations by the families of two local businessmen who had been killed by unknown gunmen in Sopore earlier last month. It is said the youth worked in tandem with the gunmen and even identified the targets for the gunmen before they were killed. This is a valid and legal point and argument for the youth's arrest, but what justifies his murder?
Can extra judicial murder be justified even if the person killed was a criminal? Who must sit on judgement to decide whether Nazim Rashid had actually been an over ground worker of the gunmen or not? If police becomes the prosecutor, the judge and the hangman, then we have already reached the end of the democratic road in Jammu and Kashmir. If Nazim Rashid had been arrested for valid reasons, was his arrest recorded in the police station? Was his family informed that the youth had been arrested for interrogations? It is obligatory on part of the investigating agency to intimate the family of the arrested person about the whereabouts of a detained person. Was the normal course of law followed when the youth was arrested?
It is shocking to learn that the youth had been a neurological patient. He was under the treatment of state's most renowned neurologist. Had Nazim Rashid shown his prescriptions to those who arrested him? And was he tortured despite the fact that he was a neurological patient suffering either from epilepsy or some other serious neurological disorder?
Has our police force finally become so insensitive while dealing with terrorism that it has bred in its own culture of terror which is perhaps as heinous if not more as that of the terrorists? It is not just another custodial death to which the people in Jammu and Kashmir must become used to.
This is the first custodial death during the NC-Congress coalition government headed by Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah. He has Pro-actively reacted to the youth's murder.
Omar Abdullah will have to move beyond words in this case. He will have to deliver and deliver deterrence in this singular case. Nobody serving the law can claim to be above it. This is true of the Chief Minister and also of those who wear the honour of a uniform to protect the people's lives in Jammu and Kashmir state.
The state director general of police (DGP), Kuldeep Khoda has said he would not allow any dereliction by any member of the state police force to bring the name of the state police force into disrepute. He will have to personally ensure that facts, however, unpleasant are brought to light and placed in public domain. It is very important to place the facts of this highly condemnable murder before the people. Otherwise, anybody's son picked up by the state police tomorrow would be given up for dead by his family. And that is the worst that can happen to the image of any uniformed force in the World. |
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