“Clearly, with the rise in kidnapping of police personnel and their families, the Centre’s muscular policy is not working at all,” a former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister said today. (Photo for representation: Reuters)
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At least six Special Police Officers and one constable in Jammu and Kashmir resigned after militants abducted and murdered three policemen in Shopian this morning.
A fourth man, the brother of a police officer, was also abducted, but later set free.
Two of the three men who were killed were SPOs. The other man was a constable.
Earlier, IndiaToday.in reported that three SPOs posted videos to announce their resignations. That number increased.
The Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, a terrorist group, had threatened these men, warning them to quit their jobs or face consequences.
In late August, eleven relatives of 6 policemen were abducted by militants in Jammu and Kashmir. All of them were released.
“Clearly, with the rise in kidnapping of police personnel and their families, [the] Centre’s muscular policy is not working at all,” Mehbooba Mufti, the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, said in a tweet today.
“Dialogue, the only way forward, seems to be a distant dream for now.”
Only last evening, Mufti, whose coalition government fell this year after the BJP’s withdrawal, hailed India’s decision to accept Pakistan’s proposal of a foreign minister-level meet as a “welcome step”.
DASTARDLY ACT
A recent IndiaToday.in report says the “main reason” for the recent transfer of former Jammu and Kashmir police chief SP Vaid “is apparently the surge in terror attacks on [the] J&K Police, which started on the eve of Eid when three cops where brutally killed by militants, followed by another strike on a police party in Shopian in which four policemen were killed.”
Today, after the murder of the three policemen, Vaid decried a “dastardly act” against the state police, and appealed to fellow citizens to stand together against it.