Sopore Killing: BJP’s politicking for burying probe demand

Nothing new in it that BJP’s central leaders were seen playing politics in debates on news channels over the killing of a civilian while carrying his three year old grandson in his lap at the time of shootout in Sopore town of North Kashmir last week but the attempt of the BJP’s national spokesman Sambit Patra to link the coverage of the incident by the Kashmiri photojournalists with the conferment of Pulitzer awards on prominent valley photojournalists recently was an insult to the media professionals within and outside Jammu & Kashmir. Drawing conclusions over the identification of the killers of the civilian even before the announcement of an impartial investigation shows the concern of BJP leaders for the killing of civilians and the respect to Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to be followed by uniformed men during encounters and post gunfight clashes on encounter sites in Kashmir. The time when a photo showing a three year old boy sitting calmly on top of the lifeless body of his grandfather, Bashir Ahmed, went viral on social media , the BJP leaders were seen selling the narrative on famed news channels that there would be no Pulitzer Prize for the heart-wrenching image since the civilian they said “had been killed by militants and not the government forces”. As the Pulitzer committee in its citation of awards to three photojournalists of Jammu and Kashmir had referred to Kashmir as “contested territory”, the BJP leaders tried to blindly question the professional neutrality of the Pulitzer Committee.
To prove their points over the killing of the civilian in Sopore cross fire incident even both the IGP Kashmir and as well as the Special DG CRPF should have no objection to an impartial inquiry by an impartial panel of judges and police investigators to heal the wounds of the victim’s family.
Ironically the BJP leader’s attribute even the statement of a three year old boy to the threats of the militants. While the fact remains that an image of the Sopore cross fire incident circulated on Twitter by the head of the BJP’s IT cell did not show the soldier coming to the three year old boy for carrying him to a safer place but there are doubts over the identity of the person who has clicked the image of the child with the lifeless body of his grandpa. It is the job of professional investigators and doctors of repute to draw conclusions in the light of critical evidences which may be produced before them during the course of a proper investigation but BJP leaders have no right to draw conclusions and dub a particular individual or group of individuals as the killers of the grandpa of the three year old boy. To prove their points over the killing of the civilian in Sopore cross fire incident even both the IGP Kashmir and as well as the Special DG CRPF should have no objection to an impartial inquiry by an impartial panel of judges and police investigators to heal the wounds of the victim’s family.