Srinagar: The savage violence unleashed on Kashmiris during the past fortnight, a statistical nightmare, most of 50 deaths and 2200 injuries occurred during the first 72 hours, is matched in obscenity only by the statements of chief minister Mehbooba Mufti and her masters in New Delhi.
A chief minister, party to the murder and blinding of children, some as young as five years old, invites a few victim families to a fortified office and the massive PR department releases a few pictures of the Operation Condolence to the press.
The sanitised press release will never let us know how the meetings were arranged, how the poor, hapless families were persuaded to meet those responsible for the killing of their kin. But the elaborate mechanism of preying on the miseries of these people is by now very well known, thanks to two similar bloodbaths in 2008 and 2010. The only window to Mehbooba’s meeting with the families of firing victims