SRINAGAR: While condemning the brutal use of pellet guns and excessive force on protesters across Kashmir, senior PDP leader and Member Parliament Muzaffar Hussain Beig on Thursday expressed doubt over the operation in which Hizbul Mujahideen Commander Burhan Wani was killed.
Talking to a Srinagar based news agency, he said, “To my knowledge and reports, the operation in which Burhan was killed, was against the ruling of Supreme Court. The Constitution bench of the apex court, which consisted of five judges and headed by Chief Justice has given the judgement about the Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) how to carry an operation even when AFSPA in force.”
Beig, who is renowned legal luminary of the state said, “The judgment had been given by the apex court in response to Nagaland Human Rights Forum’s petition. However, in Burhan’s killing the apex court judgement appears to have been violated. According to a claim of an Army General, the operation ended in just 3.5 minutes. Apparently, the militants were not given the offer to surrender.”
Asked what the apex court judgement states, the PDP MP said, “Wherever the army or police goes for any operation they have to take a magistrate along. Then in the presence of the magistrate, the militants have to be appealed in local language to surrender. If they militantsrefuse to surrender, then tear gas has to be used, so that militants are forced to leave the place where they are hiding. If, still it doesn’t work, then militants have to be warned and again. Then the forces have to shoot them on lower parts of the body.”
“However, in just 3.5 minutes of operation how could have been all these SOPs followed. It is clear that the apex court guidelines