T HE J&K Government led by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah adopted all unfair and inhuman means to crush the moral of BJP workers in the Valley. The state police, allegedly on the instance of Omar Abdullah, committed inhuman atrocities on BJP workers participating in the Tiranga Yatra and also to check them hoisting the National Flag at Lal Chowk, Srinagar on January 26.
When separatist leader Yasin Malik and others marched to Lal Chowk with black flags, the police offered them hot tea and cigarettes. “But we were arrested for trying to hoist the National Flag… When we asked for water, the police offered us urine.”
“The prime objective behind perpetuating inhuman atrocities on BJP workers in the Valley was to eliminate the ground support of BJP and other nationalist forces in the Valley so that the anti-national elements active in the Valley could work freely,” alleged BJP leader Shri RP Singh who successfully reached Srinagar on January 26 and tried to hoist the tricolour along with nine other party workers.
According to reports, Miss Halima Akhtar, a woman activist of BJP in Uri, was lifted on January 24 by some policemen in plain clothes and was kept at unknown place till January 28 and was thrown at Jehangir Chowk of Srinagar. She was tortured inhumanly during the captivity. When she was left at the Chowk she was very frightened. She called another party worker, Altaf Thakur, to seek his help. When Thakur reached Jehangir Chowk he found burn marks over her body and found her in semi-conscious condition. Her hairs were cut from the back. Altaf immediately took her to a hospital from where she was taken away by the police. After picking up her from the hospital, Srinagar SSP Asif Bukhari organised a press conference next day in which Halima was forced to give the statement that since she was unable to bring 50 workers for the Tiranga Yatra she burnt herself so that the BJP leaders could not punish her for not brining the workers to the Yatra.
KK Upadhyaya, an engineer from Gurgaon, was the first who tried. He was beaten up. The next group of workers came as close as 20 metres from Lal Chowk. No sooner did one of them take the flag out of his pocket and wave it, that several policemen pounced on him, snatched away the flag, tore it (the National Flag) into pieces and beat him up, fracturing his left hand in the process.
“We were ten workers including two from Delhi and eight from Rajasthan including a lady worker Shikha Rai. We also had three other supporters-two from Jammu and two from Valley but they skipped the police attention when we were being arrested. Immediately being arrested, I informed the vice president of Yuva Morcha over mobile phone that the police was taking us to Ram Munshi Bagh police station. When we were taken to the police station the policemen started torturing us as if we were Pakistanis or anti-nationals. We were beaten mercilessly by lathi and rifle butt. There are still 48 marks of beating over my body. It has been confirmed in the MLC report also. Not only this, they pushed by pagari and used very derogatory words against Sikhism. They said they would tight the screw of the Sikhs also in the Valley and the time is not far when there would be no Sikh in the Valley.
“They also used highly objectionable words against the tricolour while beating us. They uninterruptedly beat us till 7.30 pm. We were ten persons while the policemen were 35. When we were arrested there was no lady police as we had a lady worker also. The whole episode shows that the local police are also with the radicals. Their only agenda is that no nationalist voice should emerge from the Valley,” said Shri RP Singh while narrating the trauma he and his associates underwent in Kashmir, while talking to Organiser in New Delhi.
“J&K Police personnel were carrying posters – ‘Indian dogs, go back’. The arrested BJP activists were forced to take off their clothes in sub-zero temperatures. Third degree torture was meted out. Does Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have any explanation for this kind of an action? He should apologise to the nation,” BJYM national president Shri Anurag Thakur questioned.
(By Pramod Kumar)
