The Jammu and Kashmir Police has booked the father and family members of the 11th class student who was killed by Indian forces in Srinagar on 30 December 2020, under the draconian UAPA for organising a protest where they demanded the return of the body of minor, reported the Kashmir Walla.
An FIR (No. 7/2021) was filed against the seven residents of Pulwama district including the family members of Athar Mushtaq, the teenager killed in the Srinagar, under sections 147, 341, 153 IPCs, and 13 of the UAPA at the police station Rajpora in Pulwama, the police officials told Kashmir news website.
The seven people named by the police include Mushtaq Ahmad Wani, father of Athar Mushtaq, and Mushtaq’s two uncles Mohammad Shafi Wani and Mohammad Hussain Wani. The other four people named are Fayaz Ahmad Wani, Jalaludin Wani, Ruba Mi and Mushtaq Ahmad Mir.
“The police told me to stop talking to the media and to forget whatever has happened and to shut my mouth,” slain’s father Mushtaq Ahmad Wani told the Kashmir Walla.
“My relatives have also been booked, the FIR was registered on Friday, local SHO and DSP came to my home,” he said.
“After losing his son in an alleged fake encounter, Athar Mushtaq’s father has been slapped with an FIR for demanding his dead body. His crime was to stage a peaceful protest. The inhabitants of Naya Kashmir can’t even question a callous admin and have been reduced to living corpses,” former chief minister Mehbooba Muft tweeted on Sunday.
Athar was among three youth, whom security forces say were militants and killed at Lawaypora in Srinagar outskirts on December 30.
However, families of the slain youth have clarified that the three were civilians and not even remotely connected with militancy.
According to Mushtaq Ahmad Wani, his son was studying in class 11th.
“He was a civilian and brutally killed by troops in a staged encounter,” he said.
The bodies of all the three slain youth Athar Mushtaq, Aijaz Ahmad Ganai, both hailing from Pulwama and Zubair Ahmad Lone from Shopian were buried by police quietly in a graveyard in Sonamarg area in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district.
Wani and other family members protested and made a fervent appeal to the J&K administration to return the bodies for burials.
They also demanded an inquiry into the alleged ‘encounter’.
“After my son’s death, I went to Srinagar and visited the Police Control Room to see my son’s face for the last time. I was not allowed. Then I went to Gund, Ganderbal and pleaded with security men to let me, my wife and my daughter see Athar’s face. But we were not allowed to see him for the last time,” Athar’s father told presser.
