19-yr-old returns home after posing with guns
SRINAGAR: A missing Kashmiri teenager, whose gun-wielding photographs went viral on social media a week ago and raised fears that he might have joined militancy, has returned to his family, police said on Thursday.
Deputy inspector general of police (central Kashmir) GH Bhat confirmed Tufail Ahmad Mir, a college student from Srinagar’s Qamarwari area, had returned home, but refused to say whether the teenager was arrested or he surrendered.
“Why should I tell you whether he has surrendered or was arrested?” the DIG asked. On further prodding, he said that the boy is “not with us” and that “he is with his home people”. Nineteen-year-old Mir went missing on May 20 and a few days later pictures of him posing with a gun appeared on social media in Kashmir. He had recently joined college and was in his first semester at the Government Degree College in Bemina when he went missing.
A senior police official confirmed that Mir met with militants to join their ranks.
An increasing number of local men have been joining militancy after Burhan Wani, a popular Hizbul Mujahideen militant commander, was killed in an encounter in July last year but just a few of them are from the summer capital, Srinagar.
Wani is said to have taken to militancy after security forces allegedly thrashed him and his brother Khalid in 2010 without any provocation. SRINAGAR A Jammu and Kashmir policeman bludgeoned a colleague with a stone and threw the body into a river for allegedly assaulting him sexually, officers said on Thursday.
Police registered a case of murder against special police officer (SPO) Aijaz Ahmad for killing constable Sameer Kumar. Kumar allegedly sodomised Ahmad in the car they were travelling in north Kashmir’s Handwara on May 14 to drop a relative of the constable. Ahmad allegedly admitted to killing Kumar after his disappearance. He was the main suspect as the two were friends and often seen together.
Initially, the SPO made up a story that an inebriated Kumar jumped into the river over a failed affair with a girl. Central Kashmir DIG GH Bhat said the SPO revealed all during sustained questioning. “Ahmed revealed that during their journey, constable Kumar sexually assaulted him and threatened that he would disclose the incident to their colleagues,” Bhat said. The embarrassment and prospect of living with social stigma allegedly prompted him to plot Kumar’s murder. NEW DELHI: Days before the GST panel will meet to hammer out discrepancies in the new tax rates, the entertainment park industry is crying foul over the proposed 28% tax for them.
The high GST rate has put the existence of these entertainment parks at peril forcing many of them to potentially shut their shops, said members of the Indian Association of Amusement Parks and Industries (IAAPI), which represents 150 amusement, theme and water parks and family entertainment centres in the country.
While accusing the government of unfairly equating amusement parks with casinos, betting and race course, the association said being into this business would become economically unviable due to high tax.
The high GST will also force the amusement parks to pass the burden on to the people making entertainment costlier to them and out of reach for many more, IAAPI representatives said on Thursday.
“Such high taxation rate of 28% puts a big question mark on the sustenance of our entertainment parks in India. We are already under substantial stress owing to the existing high tax rates and low margins. Parks not only pay 15% entertainment tax to the states, they also paid additional 15% service tax slapped on the industry last year,” said Santokh Chawla of IAAI, who runs Fun ‘n’ Food Village Amusement and Water Park in New Delhi.
“Categorising us alongside casinos, betting and race course is really unfortunate for an audience, which caters to family entertainment and recreation. It is a social infrastructure, which provides outdoor entertainment to children and youth, who are otherwise glued to gadgets and the digital world,” Chawla added.
Another IAAPI representative Ajay Sarin said the recreational park industry would like to urge the government to treat the industry at par with hospitality and restaurants which fall in the GST slab of 12%-18%.
“Globally, in markets where ever GST has been introduced, the rate is under 10%. In Australia it is 10%, Singapore 7%, Japan 5%, Malaysia 6% and Dubai is 0%,” he added.