Delhi HC Verdict Eye-Opener For India: Mirwaiz
SRINAGAR (KMN / KNS) – Welcoming the Delhi High Court verdict acquitting two Kashmiri youth in Lajpat Nagar blast case, several Kashmiri leaders across the political divide Friday said the ends of justice would be met only when the 16 precious years of life they languished in jail were given them back and those implicating them falsely were given an exemplary punishment.
It must be a blind law which pronounces a person innocent after keeping him in jail for as long as 16 years without being compensated and even then fails to bring to justice those responsible for implicating him falsely who might be busy in fabricating cases against the likes of Nisar Husain and Muhammad Ali, Hurriyat Conference (G) chairman, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, said in a statement, terming his own house arrest and denial of permission to offer Friday prayers for 33 consecutive weeks as part of the same blind law.
The Indian establishment, including its judiciary, administration and police, suspect the people of Kashmir subjecting them to atrocities in national interest, he said, adding that dozens of innocent Kashmiris were languishing in different jails even now and that there was little hope of early justice to them.
Geelani said a phobia had been created across India to look at every Kashmiri as a terrorist and miscreant. Indeed the mindset is being applied to every Muslim in the country with hundreds of innocents of them being implicated in false cases and jailed with even lawyers being reluctant to plead their cases in courts for fear of harassment by extremist Hindu organizations, he said.
Referring to the reports of union home ministry holding the army responsible for killing of 27 innocent civilians in Kupwara in 1994, Geelani said thousands of such unarmed people had been done to death by the armed forces in hundreds of such incidents over the past two decades.
Unless the Indian rulers have assumed the high moral ground only to hoodwink global opinion, they should facilitate their trial for war crimes in the World Court, he said, adding that because of presence of 7.5 lakh troops and enforcement of draconian laws, the human rights situation in the state continued to be appalling. He said the National Conference-led government did not allow protests against Zionist attacks on Gaza or even the religious Tazia procession on Ashura.
Hurriyat Conference (M) chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, said the Lajpat Nagar decree reflected how the Indian system misused its institutions to reap political dividends to stick to power by means of dirty tactics. He questioned the conscious Indians and civil society asking who would be held accountable for wasting 16 precious years of the Kashmiris who were acquitted by the court now. He described the Delhi High Court verdict as an eye-opener for India.
Meanwhile, CPI (M) Friday demanded tern action against the investigating officers responsible for fabricating the case against innocent Kashmiris in the Lajpat Nagar blast case. In a statement, the CPI (M) state secretary, M Y Tarigami, said such faulty investigations not only had a telling impact on the security of innocent people but made a mockery of policing in the country.
Tarigami expressed serious concern over the grave miscarriage of justice to scores of Kashmiri youth who were and are being wrongly arrested and charged in cases related to terror attacks across the country.
He said Delhi High Court decision in which two Kashmiri youth alleged to be militants and facing death sentence were acquitted depicted a dismal scenario of policing. In the race for promotions and perks, some fringe officers in police department are implicating Muslim youth particularly from Kashmir in frivolous cases thus maligning the image of their department, he said, urging the government of India to ensure accountability to curb such tendencies.