This comes days after its investigation revealed the alleged role of police personnel in the disappearance and reported murder of three villagers from remote South Kashmiri villages. Reports of a fourth murder have come along with startling new evidence.
Besides “greed for cash award and out-of-way promotions,” police said, there is another dimension to the police encounters: guns and ammunition recovered from militants in “genuine operations” are not being entered in official seizure records and could be, instead, “planted” on the civilians to legitimise fake encounters.
Sources said the latest case involves Showkat Ahmad Khan of Banihal (in Doda district) who went missing from Zadibal in downtown Srinagar where he was the Imam of the local mosque. Khan disappeared during the night of October 4-5 last year and remained missing despite a frantic search by the family and local residents.
It was after the expose of the murder of three South Kashmir villagers in “fake encounters,’’ that investigators, acting on a “credible lead,” ran a fact-check on the killing of a “Pakistani militant’’ in an encounter at Ajas village.
Sources said the investigators quietly accessed the photograph of the “slain Pakistani militant’’ — identified by the Ganderbal Police as Abu Hafiz of Karachi, Pakistan. It matched that of the missing Imam, Showkat Ahmad Khan.
The Ganderbal Police claimed they conducted the Ajas encounter along with 13 Rashtriya Rifles unit, saying that an AK-56, 73 rounds of ammunition and a wireless set were recovered from the slain Pakistani militant.
Sources said that investigation has revealed that Imam Showkat Ahmad Khan was picked up from downtown Srinagar the same night the police was busy flushing out two Lashkar fidayeens from a hotel in Budshah Chowk in the city.
Meanwhile, the J-K police have registered a case of abduction and murder against their own men for their involvement in the killing of 35-year-old carpenter Abdul Rehman Padroo who was picked up, shot dead in a fake encounter and dubbed as Pakistani militant soon after he went missing on December 8 last year.
Investigators said they have made progress in the case involving the disappearance of two other South Kashmir villagers Nazir Ahmad Deka and Ghulam Nabi Wani who worked as street vendors in Srinagar.
Sources said there is a pattern emerging in the killing of all three south Kashmir villagers: police constable Farooq Ahmad has been a neighbour of all the three disappeared men. Eight more policemen with the Special Operations Group of Ganderbal Police were questioned today.
Parallel to this probe is the investigation into a practice by several police officers of keeping a part of the cache of arms and ammunition seized from militants in genuine operations out of the seizure books. These weapons, sources said, were placed on the bodies of all the four civilians after they were killed in fake encounters.
Said Inspector General of Police, Kashmir range, S M Sahai: “The issue of weapons is very much a part of our investigations. Once a custodial death is there, we have to find where the weapons came from.’’ Police have now asked for seizure records from the Ganderbal Police and also the weapons officially shown as having been recovered from these civilians.
The police have also sought help from the Centre for a high-level forensic team to conduct DNA tests on the bodies of the civilians allegedly killed in fake encounters. A team from either Kolkata or Chandigarh is expected soon as the District Magistrate has given his go-ahead for the exhumation.
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