Lawyers seek high-level probe into Drugmulla encounter

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, May 23

As villagers are claiming that the Drugmulla gunfight, in which five militants were killed on Saturday, was a staged encounter, the Kashmir Bar Association has decided to take up the matter before the Jammu and Kashmir High Court and seek a high-level investigation into it.

Five unidentified militants and a soldier of the Army’s counter-insurgency unit were killed in a seven-hour gunfight at Chak Drugmulla village of Kupwara in north Kashmir on Saturday.

The police said the gunfight erupted on Saturday morning when the joint teams of the Special Operations Group of the J&K Police, Army’s 41 and 47 Rashtriya Rifles and the CRPF started a search operation after an input about the presence of militants in the area.

However, contesting the claim of security forces that the five militants were killed in a gunfight, villagers on Sunday alleged that the encounter was staged.

There have been instances in the past when locals were killed in staged encounters in the Pathribal area of Anantnag district in March 2000 and the Machil area of Kupwara district in April 2010.

“The Bar feels that when the entire population of the area maintains that the encounter was fake and staged and on handing over of the bodies to them they found from the faces of the five militants that they had been killed five or six days ago, it becomes the duty of the High Court to show more sensitivity towards the issue and adopt a realistic and people-friendly approach in finding out the truth,” the Bar said in a statement issued today.

Maintaining that the five militants were killed in an encounter on Saturday, security forces are investigating whether the slain militants had infiltrated recently or had been active in the area.

“In view of the contradictory reports about the killing of the five militants by the Army at Chak Drugmulla in Kupwara, the J&K High Court Bar Association, Srinagar, has decided to request the Chief Justice and his Companion Judges of the High Court at J&K, who are the custodians of life and liberty of the people, to take suo motu cognisance of the matter.”

The Bar said the High Court must entrust the investigation of the case to a “high-level, well-reputed, impartial investigating agency” to find out as to “how and under what circumstances” the aforesaid five militants were killed at Chak Drugmulla in Kupwara.