Centre always finds ways to continue AFSPA in Valley: Omar

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Thursday said that the government has sent the one-man commission report into last year’s Shopian killings to state Home Department for examination.

“Yes we have received the one-man commission report into Shopian killings. It has been sent to the Home Department and is being examined,” Omar told reporters on the sidelines of state awards function here.
The report has indicted paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel into the killing of three unarmed civilians in south Kashmir’s Shopian on September 7 last year.

Justice (retd) M L Koul – tasked to probe the killings in Gagren area of Shopian on September 7, 2013 – had submitted his report to the Chief Minister’s Secretariat on  Wednesday.

The killings took place on the day when renowned conductor Zubin Mehta held a concert at Shalimar Garden on the banks of Dal lake in Srinagar.

While CRPF claimed that the youth were militants as they had opened firing on them, local residents staged protests claiming that three of the slain youth were innocent locals and the fourth was a labourer from Bihar.

Sources told Deccan Herald that the Commission has held the CRPF personnel guilty of killing unarmed three civilians – Tariq Ahmad Mir, Tauseef Ahmad and Muhammad Yusuf.

The killing of fourth person has been justified by the Commission saying “Abdullah Haroon was a militant.” Sources said the accused CRPF personnel have been identified in the report.

Meanwhile, Omar said that some people in New Delhi were ‘in love’ with Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and they would “never find situation in Jammu and Kashmir conducive to revoke this draconian law.”

“This is an ongoing discussion. Earlier, it used to be the UPA government and now it is the NDA. Some people have adopted a different approach towards these laws. Even if there is 100 percent normalcy in Kashmir, they would still find some excuses for its continuation,” he said.

“I wonder what parameters they have for when they called an appropriate time for its revocation,” Omar asked.

The Chief Minister said that whenever the state government asks for the revocation of the draconian laws from Jammu and Kashmir, New Delhi maintains the rhetoric, ‘let us see next year’.