J&K DGP’s ‘threat’ to militants

Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir police issued a warning to separatist militants on Wednesday that their families could be harmed too if they try to target those of policemen fighting insurgency in the state.

“Militants should realise they too have families. Let militants take this as a warning,” J&K’s director general of police (DGP) Shesh Paul Vaid said during a TV interview.

He said that it was between the police and militants and that families should not be brought into the conflict. “If the police starts doing this, what will happen to their families?”, he asked.

This comes days after militants warned a police officer’s family to ask their ward to “quit or face the consequences”.

It was for the first time that gunmen chose to barge into a police official’s residence to threaten his family.  While speaking to this newspaper later in the day, the DGP said, “My take is: we should not bring the families into this conflict whether those of terrorists or policemen. Families have nothing to do with this. We must keep them away from this.”

In August 2016 when the Valley was on the boil in the aftermath of the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahedin’s Internet-savvy poster boy Burhan Muzaffar Wani, Kashmir’s indigenous militant outfit had asked the J&K policemen to stay at home and not to be part of the measures aimed at containing the unrest.

“We appeal to police personnel to sit at their homes like the employees of other departments are doing. The fate of the policeman who attends duty will be nothing but death,” one of its commanders Riyaz Naik had said in an 11-minute video that surfaced on the social media.

He also ahead of a police recruitment rally asked the Kashmiri youth to ignore “enticement aimed at breaking their ranks” and threatened those who wished to join the police force should also be ready to face the consequences. However, the threat was ignored by, at least, more than 5,000 youth who participated in the rally.

In December last year, another Hizb commander Zakir Rashid Bhat had in a video message warned family members of local policemen that they would be targeted if they (policemen)  “continue to harass” relatives of militants. “You (police) have committed a big mistake by harassing our families, by involving our families. If you touch our families, we will not spare your families. You think your families are in Jammu so they are safe. Even if your families are in Kanyakumari, we have the capacity to kill them there,” he had warned.

After Wani’s killing, the height of anger against the security forces particularly the J&K police and CRPF was such that there were a few attacks at the families of local policemen by enraged mobs.