Narendra Modi’s hard policy towards terrorism makes the J&K police not hand over body of Dujana to locals. Pakistan high commission asked to claim it for burial
In what is a clear shift in handling Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir by the Narendra Modi government, the Jammu and Kashmir police, has, for the first time, refused to hand over the body of a Pakistani terrorist killed in counterinsurgency operations in Kashmir to the local villagers.
The Jammu and Kashmir police have taken custody of the body of Lakshar-e-Toiba terrorist Abu Dujana, who was killed on Tuesday at village Hakripora in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district and asked the Pakistan high commission to claim it for burial in his country. The police have claimed if Pakistan does not own it up, they would ensure a burial for the slain terrorist.
Dujana belonged to Pakistan. Some people claim that he was from Gilgit-Baltistan, which India claims, is its part. However, sources say his identity is being fudged by local propagandists to ensure that he is treated as a national of the POK and is given place for burial in local graveyards.
The high commission would have to respond. The Pak authorities were earlier compelled to own Ajmal Kasab as a Pakistani, who was the lone surviving perpetrator of the Mumbai terror strike in 2008. However, Pakistani police had managed to whisk away Kasab’s parents and family from their home in Punjab to keep them away from the prying media.
From the beginning of terrorism in the early nineties, Kashmir has seen an influx of foreign terrorists, the majority of whom were Pakistani recruited by the ISI through seminaries run by their favourite Islamic ideologues like Hafiz Saeed. All those killed in operations were buried locally, in many places in separate graveyards. At some places, the locals had initially refused to bury them but the police asked them to do it.
Though it’s a fact that the local didn’t visit these graves to pay obeisance, of late the turnout at their funerals, had unnerved the police and security forces. Their funerals were turning into a show of support for the terrorists; also many youths too felt inspired and joined the terrorist groups.
In one occasion when 40 Pakistani terrorists were killed in the hills of Uri during a four-day operation and their bodies buried at the same place, propagandists later came up to claim these were the bodies of Kashmiris killed secretly by the forces.
India has never thought along the lines of not giving proper burials to the foreign terrorists like Americans did to Osama bin Laden. It’s for the first time the body of a terrorist is kept in custody of police.
It’s interesting to note that Abu Dujana was killed in the house of his wife, 26-year old Rukaiya, who, ironically had to be evacuated along with other members of the family by the raiding forces. The family too has not claimed the body of the Pakistani terrorist. Dujana was also having affairs with some other women in south Kashmir.
