BALTAL
Death visited Amarnath belt again this year as a cloudburst led to six deaths and closure of the track for around three days. When Bilal Bahadur visited the spot barely 10 hours after the crisis, he found it entirely melancholic. Desperate people looking for their relatives, labourers trying to locate their belongings and a pall of gloom enclosing the heights. “I could feel the same pain that was there when a mid summer snowfall killed many pilgrims in Pahalgam many years ago,” Bilal said. Unlike past, there have not been many pilgrims to the Hindu cave shrine. In fact, tourist footfalls were down by almost half, this year. The reason primarily are the weather conditions, officials say.
ITCHGAM
As people were hooked to the TV sets for watching the follow up of Yakub Memon hanging, this Budgam village was celebrating. Preeti Bhat, a young teacher from Ichigam got married. Muslims were busy in singing and they accompanied her to Sheikhpora home of bridegroom. This village has the history of constructing a temple from the funds it raised for its mosque.
SRINAGAR
In an impressively innovative reach-out, J&K Bank, the state’s only listed company tied up with pharma major Cipla to fund the expensive treatment of people suffering from Hepatitis-C. The two companies have set up an efficient system under which SMHS hospital in Srinagar would fund the costs of mandatory testing and medicine supply for six months to BPL patients. Normally it costs around one lakh rupees for treatment per head but once the two companies joined hands, the costs would be less than half. “We were thinking of adopting 25 patients and once the costs went substantially down, thanks to Cipla, we doubled our adoption,” an executive of the bank said. “We will take another group once the first group is infection free.”
GURDASPUR
As “militants” resurfaced in Dina Nagar, Punjab – all of a sudden, required support and it went from J&K. JK Police sent two bullet proof vehicles, the Rukshaks instantly. These vehicles were used to get into the police station where the attackers had positioned themselves after killing SP, three home guards and three civilians. Even the army flew three columns of para-commandos from Samba to manage the Gurdaspur battle. Detecting and detonating five powerful IEDs on the nearby road has also proved a major task for the counter-insurgency grid. The passenger bus (PB06G-9569) that was attacked by militants was part of the Kathua-Amritsar service. None of the seven injured passengers was from J&K. It is yet not known who the attackers were and what their objective was.
JAMMU
The police investigation file regarding the twin grenade attacks on the Peer Mitha mosque by Hindu extremists on January 9, 2004 is missing. Two Kashmiri employees Abdul Rashid Khan and Mohammad Shafi, residents of Natipora, were killed and 19 others were injured. Investigator NIA has found two extremists Rajendra Chaudhary and Dhan Singh, of the Malegaon blasts fame, involved in this case. State police initially accused Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen for the attack. It later closed the file as untraced. Later when NIA gave inputs, the police said its original file of the case was missing.
DELHI
He is intelligent enough to know that it will not happen but what is the harm in making it part of the official records? That is what MP Tarun Vijay, the erstwhile editor of RSS mouthpiece Panchajanya and director of the BJP think-tank Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation is doing. He raised a question in the Rajya Sabha over settling soldiers in Kashmir, an old right-wing formula for changing Valley’s demographic profile, and was told it is a state subject. To stay in news, he has now formally requested BJP MP and Minister Dr Jitendra Singh to give the idea a push. But the idea is not to do it but to keep talking. After all, they also require votes, once in five years.
SRINAGAR
The issue is not who will pay for the massive embezzlement in the J&K Cricket Board. Right now the police concern is who will hear the case? On July 27, when the PIL was listed before a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice N Paul Vasanthakumar and Justice Hasnain Masoodi, the bench said the matter would be heard by a different bench on July 28 and dispersed. Reason: Justice Masoodi’s son is a NC leader. When it came up before a DB comprising Chief Justice and Justice Ali Mohammad Magrey, the latter recused saying one of the litigants is his relative. Now the case is posted for August 6. Dr Abdullah is one of the accused in the scam and he is fighting a battle against Sports Minister Imran Ansari who has wrested the JKCA leadership from him.
MANDIRBAGH
Owais Fafoo, whose swollen corpse was fished out from Jhelum in Sumbal, continues to be a mystery even though there are evidences and witnesses. Police investigations suggest, he had gone with his friend and they had drinks, a small dose of eating and eventually they went to smoke of Shivpora bund. Inebriated, they seem to have picked a battle. Fafoo’s friend had attacked a police party as well. Interestingly, his quarrels with everybody were recorded by somebody from the other bank of the river. The only not recorded was when he pushed something black in the river!
US SOS to Delhi: Of 23 most active terror email accounts operating in the Kashmir, 11 function from Pakistan (four of these created using mobile phone), two were created in the US and two others, which show as having been created in India given Pakistani mobile numbers as their alternate contact
Delhi has sanctioned Rs 19.61 crore for the replacement of text books lost in September 2014 floods
