Nazir Ganaie
Srinagar: Calling Indian democracy “bogus” before a ‘parliamentary-civil society’ team on a visit to Kashmir, father of Tufail Matoo Mohammad Ashraf on Friday said that the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was responsible to worsen the situation in Indian Kashmir.
“The bogus Indian democracy stole us from our dear and innocent children, our support of old age. I didn’t hear anybody in the parliament speaking against the killers, neither had I heard anyone to punish the killers,” Ashraf told the ‘parliamentary-civil society’ team.
He said “the forces in the valley are enjoying maximum impunity and the killers go scot free,” he said.
“The Chief minister and his company are responsible to worsen the situation in Kashmir, because they fear they will lose their chair and, their chair was dangling, and the situation in the valley got tough,” he said adding “the CM gave the killers free hand but when the mothers of these young martyrs recounts the miseries of their sons, the tears start rolling down their cheeks and this will crush whole India one day.”
A ‘parliamentary-civil society’ team on a visit to Kashmir, on their first day, met the family of Tufail Ahmad Matoo, the school boy who became the first victim of police action on June 11 which triggered the five-month long unrest in Kashmir Valley. An 11-member team comprising members of seven political groups and three civil society members and drawn up by New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Analysis (CPA), a ‘think tank to formulate alternative policies’, arrived in Srinagar on Friday.
The delegation comprising Ram Vilas Paswan and Shoaib Iqbal of Lok Janshakti Party, Gopal Choudary of Communist Party of India (Marxist), D Raja of Communist party of India, Namo Nageshwar Rao of Telgu Desham Party, Danish Ali of Janta Dal (Secular), Maheshwar Hazari of Janta Dal (United), Shahid Siddiqui of Rashtriya Lok Dal, film maker Mahesh Bhatt, journalist Seema Mustafa and academician Prof Kamal Chenoy met Matoo’s family at Rajouri Kadal in old city.
Matoo, a class 12 student, was killed after he received head injuries by a tear gas shell fired by police in Gani Memorial Staidum in Rajouri Kadal area of old city on June 11.
The death triggered mass protests across Kashmir which resulted in the killing of 112 youth mostly at the hands of the Indian forces.
“The sad part of so called Indian democracy is it is not a democracy, we have never seen it as a democracy. It is a shame on Indian politicians who are ruling this huge country which has its history, Kashmiris are not against the people of India but we are against the oppression and atrocities the rulers of this country are inflicted on innocent people of Kashmir,” Ashraf said.
“We have never seen anybody coming from the government, with what face they will come because they know they are the murders. They (Indian delegates) have come to express their sympathies with us. They have not come as representatives of Indian government but rather as members of civil society. If that would have been the case we would have never met them,” he added.
The delegation is expected to meet the people of different shades of opinion, including the separatist leaders, during their 3-day visit.
In the evening the delegation would be meeting Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front Chairman Yasin Malik.
The team would also be meeting hard-line separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and moderate Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Saturday.
The team has termed the trip as a ‘confidence building measure’ that will ‘suggest social, political and economic measures towards just peace in Kashmir’.
It also intends to ‘identify concrete confidence building measures to be taken by the government and civil society to address deepening alienation among Kashmiris’.
The initiative also wants to ‘build pressure on government through parliament for the implementation of the recommendations to reduce the suffering of Kashmiris’.
Delegates speak
In a very brief interaction with the press here some of the delegates told Agence India Press.
“We have come here to meet the affected families and we will focus on youth. Our mission is to gather the facts. We are going to access about the 8 point formula,” Parliamentarian, D Raja told Agence India Press.
“We are trying to understand the situation; we will apprise the government in Delhi about it. Law should take its time the killers should be punished,” he added.
“Our mission is fact finding and apprise the Government of India about it,” Ram Vilas Paswan said.
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Agence India Press 
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