Wednesday, January 31, 2007

One more soul falls and who knows how many will follow

Abdur Rehman Padder, the carpenter from islamabad was killed in a fake encounter, his body mutilated and buried. He was dubbed as another foreign militant and the security men who killed him were rewarded. But, his family had a missing bread winner who had left his wife , five kids and an old father behind. Their search resulted in unveiling the truth. He had been killed in cold blood to earn rewards by the Jammu and Kashmir police' Special operations group (SOG). Police in their investigation of the case, traced his missing cell phone in the possession of the SOG cops. The cops were arrested and two senior police officers who had instructed them to carry out the killing have been temporarily attached to the Inspector General's office.
The government has ordered a time bound judicial probe. It reminds me of the pathribal case in which five men were killed brutally and dubbed as foreign militants in 2000. It has been proven that the army was involved in the murder but nobody has been indicted yet. Hundreds more are missing. Every now and then we keep hearing about the elimination of foreign militants by security forces and the subsequent rewards. How many of them were kashmiris killed in similar circumstances? Will anyone ever know about the result of the hundreds of investigations that have been announced in the past? Will anyone ever find out about the fate of the tens of thousands of missing people? The head of the state says that the missing people have crossed the line of control to get trained in the other kashmir. This may be true, but he hasn't proven it to us. Could it be all of them are already dead, may be, and that is the popular belief. Wouldn't it be helpful to set up a commission to look into these missing people and for once report the findings in specific time period. Personally I doubt it is going to happen. It is very difficult to believe that in this age it would have been too difficult for these missing people to contact their family no matter where they are. They could still indicate that they are alive if they were.

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