Former chief minister and People’s Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti on Saturday visited the family of a minor girl who was gang-raped and murdered in Trikanjan Boniyar forests in Baramulla district recently.
Accompanied by several senior party leaders including Syed Altaf Bukhari and Raja Aijaz, the PDP president expressed her deep sorrow over the brutal and shameless incident that has shocked the entire state and devastated the family, a PDP spokesman said in a statement.
The gruesome rape and murder of the nine-year-old victim came to light last Sunday when her body was spotted 10 days after her disappearance in a forest area located close to her home at Trikanjan.
Mehbooba urged clerics to play their role in eradicating evils from the society.
“Prayer leaders need to lead the society in fighting the evils which otherwise are damaging our society,” she said, adding that the Boniyar incident “reflects deterioration of our values, and to address this, our religious leaders need to sit together and deliberate on how to stop such incidents.”
Expressing her condolences with the victim’s mother who hails from Jharkhand, Mehbooba said: “As a Kashmiri, we should be ashamed of the incident and our society needs to introspect. Such a gruesome and barbaric act has put a question mark on our collective societal values and it is a high time everyone introspects and demands stern, unforgiving and harsh punishment to those who have committed such a devilish and barbaric act.”