What Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti had said in the Legislative Assembly on Monday about the militancy in Kashmir Valley is nothing new, neither is she the first one to come out with such details. Sharing a common ideology and agenda and separatists joining hands with Pakistan are but obvious. Yet an independent panel headed by Yashwant Sinha, though Union Government has distanced itself from the panel by saying this is no government supported team, has asked to have dialogue with separatists. The dichotomy of ideology behind all these is beyond a common man’s senses. When it has been made clear that Pakistan and the separatists are behind the turmoil which Valley faced for five months how could one expect them to ‘open doors’ for dialogue with a team from New Delhi? Now, State Government mooting to set up Special Investigation Team (SIT) at district-level to probe civilian killings during the unrest too looks a frivolous exercise and nothing beyond. Did the killings take place in security forces custody or was it that security forces went on killing rampage on innocent civilians who were staging a peaceful protest? Then who were the stone-throwers and attacked security men, bunkers and their vehicles? Will the SIT to be constituted probe the death of security men and attack on them, damage to public property and hardship to the people they suffered during the five-months? Will the security men also be compensated as the civilians would be? There are innumerable questions which will remain unanswered forever. Government is on record that 2,690 cases had been registered in connection with stone pelting incidents, 16 cases in weapon looting and snatching in Kashmir and 463 people had been detained under the PSA. Over 4,500 security men were also injured while safeguarding the life and property of the people. This is the statistics given by the government itself and what to be seen is if any action would be taken against the supporters and perpetrators of violence or would they be left just without any punishment. Till date except for registering cases no conviction has taken place in riot cases and/or the
violence which Jammu and Kashmir has been seeing. We can presume that political compulsions must have kept the justice deliverance away.
