Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 17 September 2018 | Page 10

MILITANCY
Estranged In Their K
For the first time, the kith and kin of policemen in J&K find themselves in the cro
by Naseer Ganai in Pulwama,
Tangmarg and Kulgam
I
T’S a first for the Jammu and
Kashmir Police in three decades
of battling insurgency in the Val­
ley. Never before had militants
abd­ucted the kin of Kashmiri pol­
icemen in response to detentions
and alleged harassment of the rela­
tives of militants and ransacking or
burning down of their houses by gov­
ernment forces. That rubicon was
crossed this August, when three pol­
icemen and eight kin of policemen
were abducted and the police warned
by Hizbul Muj­ahideen’s local top gun,
Riyaz Naikoo, to refrain from involv­
ing militants’ families in their efforts
to quell the insurgency.
For long, it’s been usual practice for
security agencies to arrest family mem-
bers of militants or detain them under
preventive detention laws, deny pass-
ports to them and so on. By abducting
family members of policemen, the mil-
itants have thrown a new challenge at
the government’s policy and practice on
how to deal with militants’ families.
In an audio message he released on
August 31, a day after the abductions,
Naikoo is heard saying that the police-
men’s relatives were abducted so that
policemen “know how a mother feels
when her son is taken away”—in an
app­arent reference to alleged enforced
disappearances and arrests of unarmed
civilians associated with the history of
counterinsurgency in Kashmir. The
immediate trigger was the detention of
Naikoo’s father Asadullah by the police
and the burning down of houses belong-
ing to families of two militants.
“Release all our relatives within three
days, else your kin won’t be safe,” Naikoo
warned. “We have been saying you are
among our own, but your behaviour has
proved otherwise. If you want to involve
families in this war, we are ready for that
too. Our families cannot be a hurdle in our
path, but you think of your family…. You
act like Hitler inside the police stations,
10 OUTLOOK 17 September 2018
Another first last month was the kill-
you are involved in every second wrong-
doing in society…. You should have sup- ing of policemen in their houses during
Eid. In the evening of August 22, mili-
ported us, but you fight us.”
While social media and neighbour- tants shot dead 35-year-old sub-­
hoods buzzed with debates over the inspector Mohammed Ashraf Dar at
ethics of the abductions and whether it his home at Larev hamlet in Pulwama
reinforced the pitting of Kashmiri district, some 25 km to the south of
against Kashmiri in the conflict-torn Srinagar. Ashraf had just entered the
region, all the abducted people were house and was sitting in the kitchen
rel­eased the same evening. The militants with his 18-month-old daughter in his
warned they will abduct policemen’s kin lap. He called out for his wife, Shaila
again if their family members are arr­es­ Gani, and two sons. But suddenly found
ted or houses ransacked or burned. “Our the muzzle of an AK-47 touching his
family members are in hundreds, but face. He saw two gunmen.
According to Shaila, he tried to reason
yours are in thousands,” Naikoo said in
another audio message, issued after his with them, but they wouldn’t listen.
father Asadullah, who was detained by “They snatched our daughter from him,
tossed her to one side and fired at his face,”
the police, was set free.