The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
AAP MLA held for Quran ‘desecration’
Stop instigating our youth, Mehbooba tells Pak, wants AFSPA lifted in phases
A PUNJAB Police team arrested AAP MLA Naresh Yadav from his office in Mehrauli, Delhi, on Sunday evening for his alleged involvement in the desecration of the Quran in Malerkotla last month.
A non-bailable warrant against Yadav was issued by the trial court in Malerkotla on Saturday, soon after the main accused, Vijay Kumar, reportedly told the court that the Delhi MLA was behind the incident.
“He was arrested from his RULING OUT any role for a “third power” and asking Pakistan to stay away from Kashmir, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday set the restoration of “peace and normalcy” as the main condition to initiate talks with those “we have to talk with” in the Valley.
“There is no role for any third power to improve the situation in Jammu and Kashmir,” Singh said at the end of his two-day MORE REPORTS, P 9 visit to the Valley.
“We want to tell our neighbouring country (Pakistan) that you are yourself a victim of terrorism. You enter the Lal Masjid to eradicate terrorism. And on the other hand, you ask the youth of Kashmir to pick up guns. This should end,” he said.
Later, making her first appearance before the media after violence erupted across the Valley following the killing of militant Burhan Wani on July 8, Chief Minister and PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti accused FURY WASHED over the small village of Bamdoora as police jeeps took away Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Wani’s body in the fading evening light. It swept over businessman Khurram Shafi Mir’s orchard, uprooting the Bulgarian apple saplings he hoped would revolutionise Kashmir’s fruit industry, and torched his workers’ huts and tools. Then, it razed the home of Farooq Wani, where Burhan Wani had come to spend Eid, and six others alongside it.
The villagers of Bamdoora, meanwhile, are struggling to make sense of what happened. Farooq Wani poisoned Burhan Wani, shouts one young man, standing with a stone in his hand at an impromptu barricade on the road to the village. The walls in the house were red with blood, claims another.
But an investigation by The Indian Express, based on interviews with intelligence and police officials involved in the operation and classified documents, has found that behind Burhan Wani’s killing lies a story of deception and betrayal in which his death was just collateral damage — the original target was the man accompanying him.
Who was Sartaj Sheikh?
Late on the morning of July 8, the day Burhan Wani was to die, personnel at the Srinagar unit of J&K’S Special Operations Group (SOG) listened in as Farooq Wani