Militant leader walks out of Hizb after threat to Hurriyat
Radical militant leader Zakir Musa on Saturday severed ties with the Hizbul Mujahideen, hours after the outfit trashed his threat to behead separatist Hurriyat leaders, a development which could potentially impact militancy in Kashmir.
In a separate incident, at least two civilians including a minor girl were killed when Pakistani troops rained mortars on 35 villages and Indian posts along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri district on Saturday. Nine other people, including four Indian Army personnel, were injured.
India’s blames Pakistan of stoking militancy in Kashmir but Musa’s decision signalled serious differences among homegrown militants in the valley and the outfit’s leadership, based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Musa said the armed insur- gency — which has claimed the lives of thousands over civilian and security forces since 1989 — was aimed at creation of an “Islamic Kashmir”.
“...If Hizbul Mujahideen doesn’t represent me, then I also don’t represent them. From today onwards, I have no association with Hizbul Mujahideen,” Musa said in an audiovisual statement on Saturday.
“...Our intention should be that, we have to achieve ‘azadi’ to establish Islamic rule and not for secular state. If we are fighting for secular state then my blood won’t be spilled for that purpose.”
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A 20-year-old woman was allegedly gang raped and killed in Haryana’s Rohtak by her jilted lover and his friend, who smashed her face with a brick and crushed the body under the wheels of their car to conceal her identity, police said on Saturday.
Stray dogs had eaten the victim’s face and lower portion of her body which was spotted by a passerby in a secluded area of the city in Haryana on May 11, police added.
The accused, Sumit Kumar from Sonepat and Vikas from UP, have been arrested.
The victim’s private parts were mutilated by the accused, police said, adding that sedatives were found in her stomach during the post-mortem. The incident took place on May 9.
The woman’s parents have demanded capital punishment for the accused.
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