J&K prisons’ chief shifted a day after ‘Sehrai’ death

A day after jailed septuagenarian separatist leader and chief of Tehrik-e-Hurriyat party, Muhammad Ashraf Khan ‘Sehrai’, died reportedly from Covid19 in a Jammu hospital, the Jammu and Kashmir government on Thursday removed senior IPS officer V.K. Singh as DGP prisons.

He has been replaced by Dr B. Srinivas, also a senior IPS officer who was posted as commandant general of J&K home guards, state disaster response force and CD. Srinivas will, however, continue to hold the additional charge of the post of director, fire & emergency service, J&K, till further orders.

An order issued by the home department says that Mr Singh has been transferred and posted as commandant general HG/CD/SDRF, J&K, replacing Mr Srinivas. However, the authorities said that Mr Singh and Mr Srinivas have swapped their places and given new postings in a brief reshuffle in the police department which also sees the shifting of seven more IPS officers from their present postings and assigning them new “responsibilities”.

Sehrai, a close confidante of separatist patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani, died in Jammu’s government medical college hospital Wednesday, a day after he was shifted there from a jail of garrison town of Udhampur in critical condition.

According to the hospital authorities, the oxygen level of Sehrai who was suffering from multiple ailments had dropped to 63 on Wednesday morning and he breathed his last soon thereafter.