Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who is campaigning in Jammu, on Tuesday targeted the National Conference (NC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and the Congress, and highlighted the issue of fake encounters during their regimes.
Accusing the three parties of “promoting terrorism” in J&K, Mr. Shah said, “I want to ask the NC, the PDP, and Dr. Farooq Abdullah, in whose tenure most of the fake encounters took place? Wasn’t it Dr. Abdullah’s government then?”
Civilian deaths in alleged fake encounters remain an emotive issue in Kashmir. The fake encounters that still lurk in people’s minds include the killing of seven civilians in the forests of Anantnag’s Pathribal in 2000 and the killing of three civilians in Kupwara’s Machil in 2010. The recent “fake encounter” took place in 2010, after the Centre ended J&K’s special status in 2019, in Shopian’s Amshipora, in which three local labourers were passed off as militants.
