“Ayub was stripped, tortured and his corpse dragged several hundred metres and dumped in a corner”
Srinagar: Deputy Superintendent of Police Mohammad Ayub Pandith was deputed for access control duty on 27th of Ramzan at Jamia Masjid, the Grand Mosque in the heart of downtown Srinagar and a stronghold of separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.
Shortly after midnight, a mob chanting slogans in favour of Zakir Musa, former commander of Hizbul Mujahideen and now proponent of an Islamic Caliphate, lynched the DSP to death. He was stripped, tortured and his corpse dragged several hundred metres and dumped in a corner.
A police team from Achabal in Anantnag district was ambushed and six personnel, including the Station House Officer (SHO), were killed last week. Their bodies were mutilated thereafter. When police went to retrieve the dead bodies, they were attacked with stones by locals. Ironically, two days before the incident, over 200 locals from the same area had attended an iftar hosted by the SHO.
In April this year Lt Umar Fayyaz was abducted and killed in Shopian where he had gone to attend a family function. In the same month, four policemen and two unarmed security guards of Jammu & Kashmir Bank were killed when terrorists in Kulgam district of south Kashmir fired upon their vehicle. In the last few months, terrorists have killed a number of unarmed civilians and looted several banks in south Kashmir.
The lynching in Srinagar is being justified by the lynching in Dadri. The killing of policemen by terrorists is justified by the killings of Muslims in Gujarat.
Kashmir has seen a great deal of death and destruction in the last three decades.