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.