By Jehangir Ali
New Delhi: Jammu and Kashmir police chief R. R. Swain has sparked a major controversy by claiming that Kashmir-based political parties were “cultivating terrorist network leaders for electoral benefits”. Responding to his statement, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) chairman Mehbooba Mufti calling for him to be sacked.
Barely hours ahead of the militant attack in Doda – in which four army soldiers, including a captain, and a member of the J&K police were killed – Swain claimed that there was “overwhelming evidence” to link mainstream leaders based in Kashmir with militancy, as Pakistan “successfully came to infiltrate all important aspects of our civil society” when J&K was a state.
“Things had come to such a pass that the so-called regional mainstream parties started cultivating leaders of terrorist networks through intimidations and sometimes directly to further their electoral prospects,” the DGP said during a lecture at the Indian Institute of Management in Jammu on Monday.
Swain also alleged that before the reading down of Article 370 in 2019, the governments in J&K headed by Kashmir-based mainstream parties “sabotaged investigations” of suspects who were allegedly involved in the “facilitation and financing” of militant recruitments.
However, with the exception of incarcerated Awami Ittehad Party chairman Engineer Rashid, who was recently elected as MP from the Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency, and PDP youth president Waheed Parra, no mainstream political leaders have been charged by the police with terrorism. Both cases are currently on trial.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
