Abid Bashir
Srinagar (NVI): A day after the killing of a Lashkar-e-Taiba militant in an encounter at Ranbirgarh in Lawaypora on Srinagar outskirts, Jammu and Kashmir police today said that no Srinagar resident is in militant ranks now.
“After the killing of Lashkar-e-Taiba militant Ishfaq Rashid Khan, no resident of Srinagar district is in militant ranks now,” said Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kashmir, Vijay Kumar in a tweet on J&K Police’s official Twitter handle. Yesterday two militants including Ishfaq were killed in an encounter on Srinagar outskirts.
However, a senior police officer while giving a new twist to the case of missing Phd scholar Hilal Ahmed Dar, said that police have not listed Dar from Bemina, Srinagar in the militant category yet. “We have not listed him as a militant yet as more verification is needed to find out whether he has actually joined the militancy,” he told NVI.
On June 16, Dar, a resident of Housing Colony Bemina, who was pursuing Phd in Management studies, went missing after going on a trekking on the hills of Naranag in Ganderbal district of Central Kashmir. Though four of his friends had returned home, Dar didn’t. Since then, his family members, especially his uncles have been moving from pillar to post to track Dar, but so far there are no whereabouts of him.
Speaking to reporters on June 23, IGP Kashmir Vijay Kumar in presence of DGP Dilbagh Singh had said that the missing Bemina youth had joined militant ranks. However, the family members of Dar, strongly refuted the police claim stating that their son had no inclination to the militancy.
The missing Bemina youth’s uncle Nisar Ahmed said after today’s police tweet that their claim stands vindicated. “Even today, we had gone to Naranag to look for our son. We walked right up to the top where the friends of our son had spotted Hilal last time. We request that the police now help us track our son,” he said and appealed to the police to put in extra efforts to trace their son.”
-ARK
