Jammu: The J&K government on Wednesday yet again, invoked Article 311 of the Constitution of India, to dismiss its six employees, including two cops and two teachers, from service for working against the “interests of security of state.”
Dismissals were made through six separate GAD orders, issued on behalf of the Lieutenant Governor of J&K, citing sub-clause (c) of the proviso to clause (2) of the Article 311 of the Constitution of India.
This sub clause provides that in the interest of the security of the state, it is not expedient to hold inquiry before the removal or dismissal of a civil servant, if the President or Governor, as the case may be, is satisfied.
The sacked employees included Jaffer Hussain Butt, Constable EXJ-116221 (Belt No. 327/KTR) resident of Hunjalla of Kishtwar district; Showkat Ahmad Khan, Selection Grade Constable (SGCT) ARP-076305, resident of Arth, Narbal, district Budgam; Liyaqat Ali Kakroo, a teacher in the School Education department, resident of Nambla, Uri of Baramulla district; Abdul Hamid Wani alias Rouf-ul-Islam, teacher GMS Hunaman Sirigufwara, resident of Dupatyar Bijbehara of Anantnag district; Mohammed Rafi Butt, Junior Assistant PWD (R&B) Kishtwar resident of Pochhal of Kishtwar district and Tariq Mehmood Kohli, Range Officer (Agrostology-Poonch) resident of Chandak Haveli of Poonch district.
The orders mentioned that the Lieutenant Governor was satisfied after considering the facts and circumstances of the case(s) and on the basis of the information available that the activities of these employees “are such as to warrant” their “dismissal from service.”
“The Lieutenant Governor is satisfied under sub-clause (c) of the proviso to clause (2) of Article 311 of the Constitution of India that in the interest of the security of the State, it is not expedient to hold an enquiry” in the case of these employees, the orders read, adding that “accordingly, the Lieutenant Governor hereby dismisses” them “from service, with immediate effect.”
So far, since May this year the government has sacked over a dozen employees, including two sons of Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin. Officially speaking, their services were terminated following recommendations by the committee set up by the J&K government to scrutinise “suspected individuals” in the administration. The employees hailed from different government departments including J&K Police, education, health, revenue, power.
Official sources, while sharing details of the dossiers prepared against these employees, which formed the basis of their dismissal, maintained that Constable Jaffer Hussain Butt was a part of conspiracy of this weapon loot by armed militants of Hizb ul Mujahideen (HM) on March 8, 2019 in Kishtwar. The militants had snatched the service rifle AK-47 along with 3 magazines and 90 live cartridges from Head Constable Daleep Singh from his rented accommodation. The Head Constable was performing the duties as in-charge escort with District Magistrate Kishtwar.
They pointed out that this incident sent shock waves in Kishtwar as it took place after the killing of two brothers namely Anil Parihar and Ajeet Parihar. Butt was a part of conspiracy of this weapon loot as he had willingly and knowingly provided logistics support to HM militants Osama Bin Javid alias Osama, Haroon Abbas Wani alias Haroon and Zahid Hussain. According to official sources, Butt provided them his Maruti Suzuki Alto Car-800 bearing registration No. JK-17/5025 and facilitated their safe movement to target Head Constable Daleep Singh and snatch his service rifle AK-47 from his rented room at Asrarabad Kishtwar.
“Soon after having come to know about the incident taking place and sensing trouble, Jaffer Hussain Butt with criminal intention and motive cleverly cooked up a false story and revealed it to his colleagues and senior police officers. He revealed the false registration number of his vehicle as JK17-2550 instead of JK17-5025 to mislead the police to circumvent a real-time counter action,” they revealed. As per the official dossier, the criminal intentions of Butt also spoke of his deep involvement in the terror incident as one of the militants Osama bin Javid alias Osama, involved in this crime was well known to him.
The contents of dossier, shared with Greater Kashmir by the official sources, described Selection Grade Constable (SGCT) Showkat Ahmad Khan as “a notorious and hardcore sympathiser and Over Ground Worker (OGW) of LeT who has brazenly used his position as a police personnel to give a degree of legitimacy to the secessionist agenda against the Indian State in the UT of J&K.”
“Showkat, unfortunately, in utter disregard of his mandate to work for the Police department which is at the forefront of fighting terrorism, clandestinely got in activities detrimental to the security of the state,” the sources revealed.
Official sources mentioned that Liyaqat Ali Kakroo remained a local trained militant of HM even in service. While a large portion of his illegal activities including his discreet participation in militancy related activities though clandestinely could not be formally documented in the records of police, it was only after his arrest in December 2001 that his real face as a locally trained militant of HM was exposed. A sneak peek of his dossier procured through the official sources mentioned that on December 17, 2001, on specific information, the 34th Bn of BSF had laid an ambush in Chan Mohalla Chattabal Srinagar. He was apprehended by the ambush party along with 2 hand grenades and 20 numbers of DE-3A sticks (explosive) weighing 2 Kg from his possession. It was this incident which exposed him to be a local trained militant (LTM) of HM, the sources stated.
After getting bailed out in the first case; on June 10, 12th Bn of SIKH LI while patrolling along Dudran Barnali track in Boniyar Uri apprehended him carrying a large cache of arms, ammunition and explosive including Chinese pistol, explosive and hand grenades for militant activities.
Official sources pointed out that Kakroo after being arrested and detained under J&K Public Safety Act (PSA), as a local trained (HM) militant in the year 2001-02, stealthily transformed himself into a hardcore Over Ground Worker (OGW) of HM and “brazenly used his position as a government teacher to give a degree of legitimacy to his extremist and secessionist agenda against the Indian State in and around Baramulla and Srinagar area.” He emerged as an important and confidential OGW of HM and was given the assignment to safely transport arms, ammunition and explosives from one place to other for carrying militancy related activities, the sources added.
According to official sources, the well knit militant network of Kakroo with HM militants again came to surface when on April 26,2021, upon an intelligence input, he along with his associate namely Asgar Mir son of Hafizulla Mir of Trikanjan Parbela Baramulla was arrested in a joint operation carried out by Police and 53rd Bn of CRPF at Domail Baramulla. 1 Chinese grenade each was recovered from him and his associate.
With regard to Abdul Hamid Wani alias Rouf-ul-Islam, official sources revealed that he was an ex-militant of outfit Allah Tigers and had a “prolonged history of having carried practically and actively the ideology of secessionism and separatism in his area.” They stated that the gravity of his involvement in secessionism could be gauged from the fact that even being a government teacher, he became an active militant (District Commander) of Allah Tigers. During his active role as a militant, he was closely associated with another former militant turned businessman and member of Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) namely Abdul Aziz Bhat of Arder Anantnag, official sources maintained. They stated that Wani and his associates extorted a lot of money on gun point from local public for themselves and also to carry out militant activities in the area.
Official sources said that Allah Tigers, the small radical militant outfit involved in “organised armed rebellion against the Indian State and in favour of merger of Kashmir with Pakistan, was notoriously infamous for shutting down cinemas, bars and beauty parlours in Kashmir valley. Any one not obeying their diktats was threatened with punishment of death.”
According to officials, leveraging his JeI affiliation, Wani, manipulated (a clever combination of coercion and persuasion) the then supervisory authority and obtained an appointment order in his favour in 1988-89. “In other words he never underwent a public selection proceeding and is a backdoor appointee. It was under this thoughtful strategy of JeI to enlarge its mass base, manage financial resources and intrude into the government machinery; particularly school education that Abdul Hamid Wani got a government job,” his dossier, shared by official sources, mentioned.
It further added that disregarding his service mandate, Wani propagated his ideology of militancy and secessionism openly while participating in Friday sermons in local mosques, at the time of funerals of killed militants and “during condolences (Taiziyat) gatherings of civilians in the area projecting it as oppression by Indian security forces.”
Tariq Mehmood Kohli, Range Officer, according to official sources, was involved in smuggling of illegal arms, ammunition, explosives including hard drugs and FICN from Pakistan as a part of militant syndicate.
“The Pakistani intelligence had provided a communication facility to Tariq Mehmood Kohli by way of Pakistani SIM cards which he used in the areas adjacent to LoC for planning and executing the trans-border smuggling,” they maintained. Officials stated that it would not be wrong to say that during the first decade of this century he was one of the top subversive agents of the adversary who sustained and promoted militancy in Poonch.
Official sources, quoting his dossier, mentioned that as per reports Kohli had been asked by the adversary to hunker down and become a sleeper cell to strike back as and when the situation became favourable for the militants and secessionists.
They averred that Kohli too unfortunately despite being a government employee chose to build and expand a militant network of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in Poonch area with the “ultimate objective of waging war against the Union of India and breaking Jammu and Kashmir territorially and constitutionally from it.” According to them, he remained an instrumental point-man and OGW of LeT over the years by harbouring militants.
As per official sources, his dossier mentioned that Kohli was once a close associate of LeT commander Abu Hanzla with whom he had planned and executed a number of subversive activities in district Poonch.
“Not only did Tariq Mehmood Kohli resort to clandestine methods in assisting the enemy engaged in hostility with the Indian state but also pumped in FICN. His concealment of the criminal acts facilitated the enemy in carrying out activities prejudicial to national security. It was discreetly learnt that after a one letter communication between the DM Poonch and the SSP Poonch, the detention order under PSA was sabotaged by Tariq Mehmood Kohli through the channels of influence which the competent authority could not resist. The play of the same channels of extraneous influence from within the politico-administrative framework that supervised the system then also has been found to be the reason for preventing it from taking the cases to its logical and legal conclusion,” official sources, quoting his dossier, revealed to Greater Kashmir.
In case of Mohammed Rafi Butt, official sources pointed out that the nexus between him (Rafi Butt), and the militants in Kishtwar could surface only after one of his associates namely Tariq Hussain Giri was arrested by NIA investigating the case of the killing of a prominent RSS leader Chanderkant and his PSO Rajinder Kumar in the premises of District Hospital Kishtwar on April 9, 2019.
Official sources pointed out that the investigations also revealed that not only did Mohammed Rafi Butt provide food and shelter to the HM militants but also harboured and transported them from time to time to conceal their designs thereby providing them a safe environment to execute militant plans in Kishtwar.
Investigation conducted by NIA revealed that the attack on the RSS leader and his PSO was carried out by 3 HM militants namely Osama Bin Javed alias Osama, Haroon Abbas Wani alias Haroon and Zahid Hussain after proper reconnaissance prior to the attack, official sources quoting his dossier maintained.
It was also revealed during investigation that this incident was one among the four militancy related incidents committed in the period from November, 2018 to September, 2019 by HM militant outfit in furtherance of a larger conspiracy to create panic and militancy to force the exodus of members of a particular community from district Kishtwar and other areas of erstwhile Doda district, official sources averred.
Today’s dismissal orders were issued close on the heels of September 16 directive where the J&K government had directed that those employees, whose conduct, would be found “unbecoming of a government servant” and would get an adverse report during their periodic verification of character and antecedents, might face “termination from services.”
The government had issued a renewed set of instructions and parameters to be followed by the Administrative departments during periodic verification of character and antecedents of government employees.
As per those parameters, every government employee was “mandatorily required to maintain absolute integrity, honesty and allegiance to the Union of India and its Constitution and do nothing which is unbecoming of a government servant.”
“Further, a government employee is bound by the J&K Government Employees Conduct Rules, 1971 all the time during his service,” was another instruction. These rules contain various provisions covering a wide range of activities governing conduct of employees in public and private.
Parameters to be taken care of by the departments while verifying employees’ antecedents related to “involvement in any act of sabotage, espionage, treason, terrorism, subversion, sedition/ secession, facilitating foreign interference, incitement to violence or any other unconstitutional act.”