'You too have families', warns J&K DGP after militants threaten cop's kin

Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir Police on Wednesday issued an indirect warning to separatist militants that their families could be harmed too if they try to target those of policemen fighting the 27-year-old insurgency in the state.

“My take is; we should not bring the families into this conflict whether those of terrorists or policemen. Families have nothing to do with this. We must keep them away from this,” J&K’s Director General of Police Shesh Paul Vaid said while speaking to this newspaper.

This comes days after militants warned a police officer’s family to ask their ward to “quit or face the consequences”. Four militants had on March 4 night barged into the residence of a police officer of Deputy SP’s rank in Chillipora Heff village in southern Shopian district, reportedly damaged electronic appliances and broke windowpanes and warned his family that he should “quit his job or face the consequences.”

They told the family that the police and other security forces were damaging the properties of the people and should know “we can also do it.” The police officer is posted in Srinagar.

Earlier during that day, the security forces had called off their nightlong cordon-and-search operation in the village after they learnt that a group of militants that had been holed up in a private house earlier had escaped the dragnet. Police believe that the same group of militants showed up at the officer’s residence later. It has registered a case (FIR 32/17) against the unknown militants under various provisions of the Ranbir Panel Code and taken up investigations.

The DG, police, earlier on Wednesday said in a TV interview that the militants too have families. "Militants should realise they too have families. Let militants take this as a warning."

He added that it was between police and militants, and that families should not be brought into the conflict. “If the police start doing this, what will happen to their families?" he asked.

In August 2016, when the Valley was on the boil in the aftermath of the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahedin’s Internet-savvy poster boy Burhan Muzaffar Wani, Kashmir’s indigenous militant outfit had asked the J&K policemen to stay at home and not to be part of the measures aimed at containing the unrest.

“We appeal police personnel to sit at their homes like the employees of other departments are doing. The fate of the policeman who attends duty will be nothing but death,” one of its commanders Riyaz Naik had said in an 11-minute video that had surfaced on the social media.

Ahead of a police recruitment rally, he also asked the Kashmiri youth to ignore “enticement aimed at breaking their ranks” and threatened those who wished to join the police force should also be ready to face the consequences.

However, the threat was ignored by, at least, more than 5,000 youth who participated in the rally.

In December last year, another Hizb commander Zakir Rashid Bhat had in a video message warned family members of local policemen that they would be targeted if they (policemen) “continue to harass” relatives of militants. “You (police) have committed a big mistake by harassing our families, by involving our families. If you touch our families, we will not spare your families. You think your families are in Jammu so they are safe. Even if your families are in Kanyakumari, we have the capacity to kill them there,” he had warned.

During the post Wani killing, the height of anger against the security forces particularly the J&K police and CRPF was such that there were a few attacks at the families of local policemen by enraged mobs.

One such attack took place at Chadrigam in Tral area of southern Pulwama on July 12, 2016 when a mob barged into the house of a police official Muhammad Ashraf and beat up his wife and daughter.

However, the thrashing of the mother-daughter duo evoked condemnation in the Valley and beyond and many people took to the social networking sites to voice their disapproval.

Though hundreds of policemen have been killed and injured in militant attacks during more than two and a half decades old militancy and issuing of threats to them by various militants outfits is a routine, it was for the first time that the gunmen chose to barge into a police official’s residence to threaten his family.

They also told the family that the police were harassing those providing shelter to militants and damaging their property during raids in different parts of south Kashmir and that they should desist from doing it.