19-yr-old returns home after posing with guns

THE POLICE REFUSED TO REVEAL WHETHER THE TEENAGER HAD SURRENDERED OR HE WAS ARRESTED

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.

Last month, a 23-year-old man from Shopian, who escaped from police custody earlier this month, released a video saying he had joined the militant ranks and that “tyranny’ and “illegal detention” had led him to becoming an insurgent.

On May 14, the then Kashmir police inspector general (IG), SJM Gilani said that around 200 militants were active in Kashmir valley and around 110 were local men.

Superintendent of police (east city) Gurvinder Pal Singh told the Hindustan Times last week that two men from his area had joined militancy after Wani’s death.

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.