The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) today demanded a judicial probe into the alleged killing of a member of a Gujjar community during an anti encroachment drive in the Samba district of Jammu and Kashmir yesterday.
“The killing of a civilian is unfortunate and the PDP demands that a judicial probe be immediately ordered into the killing”, senior PDP leader and former Education minister Naeem Akhtar told reporters here today.
A member of the Gujjar community was killed during the clashes between an anti encroachment team of the Jammu Development Authority (JDA) and the encroachers in the Sarore area of Samba district yesterday.
“Encroachments were also removed in our time but nobody lost his life at that time.
A fair probe should be held into the killing of the civilian so that a message of justice should go to the people of the state and at a time when there is no political government”, he said.
Akhtar said the Governor is in a position to do it and send a message that there is an even handed policy and there is no such thing that a particular community was being targeted.
“If such a message (that members of one community were being targeted) goes then it would not be in the good interest of the state”, he said.
Akhtar said that while his party favours the removal of encroachments from the government land but that should not be at the cost of human life.
“We have told it to the government that encroachment must be removed but for that you should not adopt ways by which it would serve more losses than the benefits.
“We are not polarising it as you are inferring it to be, there is no communal politics involved in it”, he said.
The PDP leader said that a human life has been lost and “we say that if encroachments have to be lifted do it but not selectively”, Akhtar said.
While demanding compensation and a government job for the next of the kin of the man killed, the PDP leader said that government should also take measures to rehabilitate the peoples whose houses were demolished during the anti encroachment drive.
On the attack on Independent MLA Engineer Rashid who was allegedly attacked in Rajouri a few days he ago, he said that any type of attack was condemnable.
