A top IAS officer, who heads Power Development Corporation in Jammu and Kashmir, has described setting a house of slain PDP worker on fire by a mob on Tuesday, as “dehumanizing influence of war” in Kashmir.
Shah Faesal, 2010 IAS topper, in his facebook post, says, “The message from Catalonia is that you don't need to lose your humanity to win the fight for your political rights. But here in our part of the word, after three decades of turmoil it's getting difficult to figure out who is more zaalim - state, non-state or the people themselves.”
“If you have to look at the dehumanising influence of war and violence just look at the mob that had gone to burn the house of a retired headman who got killed and whose children had reportedly resisted the known unknown killers”, he writes.
“The message is clear. Next time someone enters your home to kill you, make it sure that you extend them all courtesy while they pour bullets into your head,” he says.
His post has trigged a debate on his wall. “For wounding some 600 Catalans, Spain apologised. Yesterday, Portugal’s interior minister resigned after wildfires killed more than a hundred people in the past four months. Now imagine the repression in Kashmir and the reaction by New Delhi and its partners in Kashmir. In 2016 some 100 civilians were killed. Did anyone resign? Last year again, firing pellets on civilian protesters was not only justified but thousands more cartridges were sent to douse the political aspirations raging for decades. The state's violence has been far greater and stronger than the one committed by the non-state players”, Baba Umar, a Kashmiri journalist, wrote, in response.
On Tuesday, a mob set a house belonging to a slain former PDP panch, Mohammed Ramzan Sheikh, on fire in Shopian district of South Kashmir. Sheikh was gunned down by militants on Monday evening. According to the police when the militants came to kill Sheikh, his family members had a scuffle with the assailants in which one of the militants identified as Showkat Ahmed was also killed.
The next day as the mourners were gathering at the residence of Sheikh, a mob mainly instigated by militants attacked the house, police said.
Police rescued the family members which included Sheikh's mother, Rafiqa, wife Nusrat Begum, brother Farooq Ahmed Sheikh, his two sons and two daughters.
