On Friday afternoon, armored vehicles of police personnel entered the village in Budgam district in Central Kashmir for mass raids after Fayyaz Hussain, a deputy superintendent of police sustained head injury in a clash at the local mosque about 2 PM. The troops detained seven men ‘who they kept tied to a tree first then took them away in the evening’. Police has also lodged FIR against 50- identified, under the charges of arson and attempt to murder.
The dispute is said to ensued on Friday when police interrupted a congregational prayer, which is a common violation of Covid-19 lockdown guidelines. Gulam Rasool Dar, a resident of the village told The Kashmir Wala that Mr. Hussain did not take his shoes off when he entered the mosque with his escorts to stop service. “This enraged the worshippers,” told Ghulam Mohammad Dar, the village Sarpanch, associated with BJP. He was elected unopposed in his village and became Sarpanch in 2019.
However, in the Friday raid, Forces did not discriminate between his house and his neighbors’. They damaged his property while he sat inside his house, the broken windshield of his car, he himself showed.
In order to escape the troops, some rushed to the attic, some fled out of their own home while some people locked themselves inside as police stormed in from the front gate, over the boundary walls, and from every direction. “Ms. Bano left her house deserted and spent her night outside under the open sky along with a few other villagers even when the rain poured on Saturday night. They could not dare to return as they fear convoy of armored vehicles might descend onto the village again” told Miss Bano to a correspondent from The Kashmir Walla when she returned home to assess the damage. Among the detainees is Ms. Bano’s 80-year-old father, Abdul Gaffar Dar.
More than a dozen villagers reported loot and damage of their valuable possessions—including cash, electronic appliances, furniture, or traditional earthen piggy banks, cooking gas cylinders, and gold jewellery—during the raids.
While confronting the troops, women have been gagged and their mouth shoved with a gun barrel if they tried to scream such brutal treatment left a woman’s leg bruised.
However, SSP (Senior Superintendent of Police), Budgam, Amod Nagpur, rejected the allegations of vandalism saying “The Police don’t do that” and blamed the internal rift caused after the death of militant Riyaz Naikoo for the same.
Input from: The Kahmir Walla Pictures From Kunwar Singh
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