Saima Bhat
Srinagar
In devastating revelations, a delegation of Raiyar villagers in Budgam accused their Sarpanch of women peddling, and spearheading a huge terror network that helps him run parallel economies at the cost of the habitation. Identified as Ghulam Qadir Mir, they alleged, nobody from the system has ever tried to take away the gun that he had acquired as a day-time-militant and a night-hour-informer.
“We have had enough of democracy,” one of the elderly persons heading the delegation said. “We just want this man to be behind the bars so that he could cool our heels for after being tortured for so long”. Mir is supported by the reigning lawmaker Hakim Yasin.
Villagers said the entire crisis is the outcome of Mir spearheading a gang that decides who deserves what. It essentially started when Sarpanch sat over the decision of who deserve IAY aid and who does not. As the people reacted by using the RTI, it triggered tensions and a lot of friction. That started the ongoing crisis in which police claims it has taken certain basic measures like registration of FIRs against rival factions.
People against Mir are not strangers to him. One of them is Mohammad Amin, a teenager who accused his uncle of killing his mother. “It was on April 24, 2011,” Amin remembers. “Mir came to our house and asked my mother Naseema that she should vote for him, she refused and this infuriated him and he damaged the entire household and left after kicking my mother’s belly.” The young man said his mother fled from house and stayed a night in the open. Next day she died. She was barely 28. There was no police case, just the routine mourning.
Raja is Mir’s another sister. She has her son Mushtaq Ahmad with head injury in the delegation. “I can not live in this atmosphere,” she said. “He wants to kill me too.” With her son injured, she had gone to the police station seeking security to her family. “They gave me two cops for security and my brother’s gang attacked them as well,” Raja said. “I need some space somewhere else so that I can protect my family especially my daughters.”
Raja says the friction with her brother has more to do with his moral crisis than the money or the facilities. “He is increasingly into women and it has been his economy throughout,” Raja alleged. “He encourages couples to flee and provides them every facility and then become a mediator between police, and the families involved and that gets him money.” For all these operations, she said, she would use homes of his sisters as hideouts. “We refused to offer shelter to one such case recently that was also his distant relation and we faced this,” she alleged.
Villagers said Mir has not speared anything. They even looted Rs 90,000 that was raised for the local mosque. They identified Mir’s hit-men as Rashid Mir, Aslam Deanda, Manzoor Ahmad Bhat and Akbar Deanda, an employee with the PHE.
The delegation alleged that Mir had a long criminal history. He was a militant with no hard and fast affiliations during the day and would sleep in the local garrison. “Nobody has actually tried to take away the gun from him even though Kashmir is more peaceful now,” Raja’s husband Ghulam Qadir said. One of the members of the delegation was carrying a coloured photograph of Mir showing him in full battle gear and aiming at something with an AK rifle. “For God’s sake take this gun away from him,” a wrinkled face from the crowd shouted.
Efforts to contact the controversial Sarpanch failed. However police said they are aware of the matter. Police said it basically is a personal family dispute which later divided the whole village in two opposing groups. “The two groups entered into a local mosque where they indulged in anti religious acts and the matter finally involved police.” Two FIRs 7 (under sections 147, 323, 341) and 8 (under sections 147, 295, 427) stand lodged against both the groups, against each other.
