DIED: Mohammad Hussain Khan died of brain haemorrhage two months after his two sons Altaf Hussain, 35, and Abid Ahmad, 25, were murdered in Baramulla’s Gujjarpati forest belt. Khan’s third son Shabir Ahmad is currently detained at the Udhampur police station under Public Safety Act (PSA) for his alleged involvement in stone hurling.
RESUMED: Suspended on July 31, the railways partially resumed its operations on the 70 km Nowgam-Qazigund stretch. Against five pairs of diesel multiple units only one will ply twice a day. Repairing Nowgam-Baramulla link will take three more months. From now on nearly 3000 security men will guard the 119-kms track.
CONCLUDED: On concluding their third visit to J&K the interlocutors said that the people told them that serious and urgent efforts were required to reduce the trust deficit between the rulers and the ruled. They also visited border Poonch-Rajouri belt and triggered a controversy there after messing and missing up their meeting with BJP, NPP and others in Jammu.
SENTENCED: Fayaz Ahmad, an alleged Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militant was sentenced to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment by a fast track court in Gaziabad for attempting to carry out explosions in the city. He was arrested on August 12, 2008 by UP police.
CHALLENGED: Amid daily protests of the students, lawyer G M Wani has filed a PIL in the High Court challenging the winter schooling order. The petition seeks empowering of Chief Education Officers so that they can cancel all the classes, where the schools are without proper space, buildings or windows.
APPOINTED: Finally academic and track-II player Amitabh Mattoo was appointed as VC of the Central University Jammu. The appointment shocked people who have been spearheading an agitation against his appointment, stating that he was an outsider. A Kashmiri Pandit, Matoo served earlier as the VC of Jammu University.
DIRECTED: SHRC has asked state government to conduct a magisterial inquiry into the death of Manzoor Ahmad Bhat, a resident of Nowbal Gundibal in Kulgam. The direction came in an application that his son Muzaffar Ahmad filed saying he was killed by army, on March 4, 1994 and dubbed a militant.
ARRESTED: Using a Youtube video, the police arrested a school boy for beating a policeman. A Class XII student from Rajouri Kadal, Shadab Hashmi was charged with attempt to murder, abduction and snatching of weapon. The clip shows a cop Mushtaq Ahmad, separated from his contingent, being assaulted by a small group of angry stone-throwers who also try to snatch his rifle, in Urdu Bazar.
RESTORED: State government revoked ban on SMS on post paid services except on bulk messaging service. The ban was imposed during summer by the MHA on recommendations of the state government.
SIGNED: J&K’s Power Development Corporation (PDC) inked a deal with the NHPC and the PTC for a joint venture Chenab Power Projects Corporations Ltd that will implement three Chenab basin projects totalling 2120 MW of clean energy. The MoU was signed in October 2008. The corporation that M Y Khan, former chairman of JK Bank heads, would implement 1000 MW Pakal Dull, 600 MW Kiru and 520 MW Kawar projects. While NHPC and JKPDC holds 49 percent each the PTC will have two percent stakes in the JV.
DESTROYED: Khupran, a remote Gurez village was devastated in a nocturnal conflagration. The area falling in Tulail belt is not accessible to any fire tender and the people and army jointly doused the conflagration using buckets of water. Around 1500 houses, nine mosques, seven schools were destroyed in nine different fire incidents since 2006 in the area, mostly during winter dry spell.
REPLACED: Maj Gen Raul Gloodtdofsky Fernandez of Uruguay was appointed the new chief of the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP). He replaced Maj Gen Kim Moon Hwa of South Korea.
REJECTED: Principal district and session judge Srinagar B L Bhat rejected detained teacher Noor M Bhat’s application observing his questions were ‘seditious and rebellious’. Bhat was arrested by police on December 10 for his “questionable” content in an undergraduate question paper, he had set.
BOOKED: Police booked senior Kashmiri teacher of the University of Kashmir Prof Shad Ramzan for putting “obscene content” in a question paper. A 2009 Sahitya Academy Award winner Ramzan had asked BA (I) students to translate a passage into Kashmir from Urdu that contained reference to women’s chest.
