KL NEWS NETWORK
SRINAGAR
AIP president and MLA Langate Er Rashid Tuesday termed the life imprisonment sentence to six army men involved in Machil fake encounter an “eye opener for those who have been praising India’s justice system” and said that if Afzal Guru, Ajmal Kasab and Yaqoob Menon could be hanged, why these killers could not be treated same way.
“While army court has convicted the Jawans and officers,” Rashid said in a statement, “it needs not to be explained that the said court has found them guilty of a heinous crime of murdering three innocent youth to get perks and privileges.”
Army, Police or any other security agency, he said, is duty bound to protect the life and property of people and if they get indulged in killing civilians, the gravity of the crime is always much more in such cases.
“There is no justification in hanging Afzal Guru to satisfy the collective conscience of people of India despite the fact that he was not directly involved in the attack on parliament,” he said, “but at the same time giving just life imprisonment to six army personnel against whom crime is proved and established is murder of justice.”
Either Govt of India should abolish capital punishment or must hang all the six army men found guilty of killing innocents, he said.
“Army cannot protect dozens of its officers who committed much more heinous crimes than Machil fake encounter in every nook and corner of the state,” he said. “The confession of being guilt in Machil is just tip of an ice berg of the crimes committed against innocent Kashmiris by the army and other security agencies.”
Punishment given to six accused is just to mislead the world community, he said, that Govt of India cares about the human rights.
Er Rashid asked unbiased intellectuals and civil society of India to introspect how the wheels of justice move when it comes to responding and reacting to “state terrorism”.
He urged army and Delhi to investigate hundreds of cases against “notorious army officers which they committed against Kashmiris from 1990 till date and punish them without becoming a barrier in the justice system, if they really have some respect towards human lives and human rights”.
