JOIN US‘Legitimate doubts' over authenticity of Rambagh encounter: Mehbooba Mufti
Regional PDP president and former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Mehbooba Mufti on Thursday said “legitimate doubts” are looming over the authenticity of an encounter in Srinagar last evening in which three militants were killed.
Police said three militants, including Mehran Shalla, a top commander of The Resistance Front (TRF), were killed in a brief shootout in the Rambagh area of Srinagar on Wednesday evening.
However, eyewitnesses claimed that the armed forces, some of them in plainclothes, intercepted a Santro car, asked the occupants to get out of the vehicles and fired at them.
In a tweet, Mufti said, “After yesterday’s alleged encounter at Rambagh legitimate doubts are looming over its authenticity. As per reports & witnesses it seems that the firing was one sided. Again the official version far from truth is not in line with ground realities as seen in Shopian, HMT & Hyderpora (sic).”
Several videos have surfaced on social media in which women who have gathered near the spot of the incident claim that the trio was unarmed and forces shot them “in front of them”.
The allegations by the former CM also come on the heels of the killing of three civilians, Mohammad Altaf Bhat, Dr Mudassir Gul and Aamir Magray, in an alleged encounter in Hyderpora area on November 15.
After police buried the three civilians in far off Handwara in north Kashmir's Kupwara district, J&K government exhumed bodies of two civilians – Bhat and Gul - and handed over them to their families after public outcry and allegations by their families that they were killed in a “fake encounter.”
Meanwhile, a shutdown was observed in the old city areas of Srinagar against the killing of the militants in the Rambagh shootout. Reports said that businesses and shops were closed in several areas of the old city even as the movement of traffic was thin.
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