Srinagar, Dec 31: Urging the politicians to refrain from “instigating people” over Hyderpora killings, Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone, Vijay Kumar on Friday said that only the Court can decide whether the investigation into the incident was fair or wrong.
The Kashmir Police chief said in a democratic setup, media persons, politicians and families have the right to not be satisfied with the investigation and seek a higher level probe through the NIA, CBI, High Court.
“We do not have any objection to that. But, only the Court can decide whether any investigation is wrong or fair,” he said.
“SIT investigates the incident, it will frame a chargesheet and submit that to the honourable Court. There will be a judicial review and a judge will decide whether the investigation is wrong or not,” Kumar said.
“No politician, family member or media person can do that or say it is concocted, they have no such right,” he remarked.
The IGP in an apparent reference to the statement made by a former Chief Minister said: “He has been the CM, Home Department was under him and he knows what policing is,” IGP said. “The court will decide that. It is not that we have given a clean chit. Our every case will be decided by the court, we will not decide that. So, I request such a leader to not instigate the public. Let the court decide. If the court thinks it is wrong, it will order a reinvestigation.”
IGP also took a dig at politicians for questioning the term Hybrid militants. He said some “political leaders questioned the term Hybrid militants but the fact remains that when police coined the term in January 2021, the Goggle had accepted it,”
“We identify them from their digital signature. This is a challenge and will remain so. So far, we have identified 25 of them,” he said, adding that the second major challenge will be to prevent policemen from becoming soft targets. “The other challenge is the legitimating of killings of civilian and policemen by terrorists,” he added.
“Unfortunately, we see some politicians also legitimising the killings. What was the need to the encounter of the dreaded terrorist Mehran with his photo and say it was cruel, there is human rights violation. He killed many civilians. Is it wrong to kill a terrorist like Abbas in an encounter? Why show sympathy with him. This is wrong? I want to tell the politicians, request them to stop this, that this is wrong, you are destroying the youth, the society,” he said.
“We will try to motivate, using families, the less threatened youth to surrender, to come back,” he said adding that they try to make the militants surrender, but if they do not, then they will arrest or neutralise them in encounters”. “ We put on hold operations just to provide an opportunity to the youth to surrender. J&K Police does not need to fight the militancy by killing the militants. We will use every modus operandi to neutralise a militant which includes, surrender, arrest etc”.
In the last year, Kumar said 9227 persons have been taken into preventive detention, 438 cases under UAPA, 458 under custody.