SRINAGAR: The Jammu and Kashmir Police’s State Investigation Agency (SIA) on Monday carried out searches at at least eight locations in Srinagar, including the residence of detained Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik, in connection with the alleged killing of a Kashmiri Pandit woman by militants in 1990.
Sources said the SIA sleuths, assisted by police and paramilitary personnel, conducted the raids in connection with FIR No. 56/1990 under Sections 302, 120 RPC, 3/27 Arms Act, and 3/2 TADA, originally registered at Police Station Nigeen and now being investigated by the SIA.
A team of SIA officials searched Malik’s Maisuma residence. Malik is presently lodged in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail.
The other locations searched by the SIA officials included the houses of Javaid Ahmad Mir @Nalka, son of Ghulam Nabi Mir, at Chamardori Zainakadal; Peer Noor ul Haq Shah @Air Marshal, son of Peer Ghulam Rasool Shah, at Illahi Bagh Bachpora; Reyaz Kabir Sheikh, son of Abdul Kabir Sheikh, at Danderkah Batamaloo; Bashir Ahmad Gojri, son of Ghulam Rasool Gojri, at Kadikadal Soklipora; Feroz Ahmad Khan @Jan Mohammad @Jana Kachroo, son of Ghulam Ahmad Khan, at Sazgaripora; Kaiser Ahmad Tiploo @Raj Tiploo, son of Ghulam Mohammad Tiploo, at Al-Hamza Colony Ahmadnagar; and Ghulam Mohammad Taploo, son of Asadullah Taploo, at Tiploo Mohalla Anchar, Srinagar.
According to police records, Sarla Bhat, a 27-year-old Kashmiri Pandit woman and nurse by profession from Anantnag, was abducted in April 1990 from Habba Khatoon Hostel of SKIMS Soura. Her bullet-ridden body was found lying in the Malabagh area of Soura the next morning.
Lt Governor Manoj Sinha recently said that the cases of militancy victims would be reinvestigated. “In the cases where FIRs have not been registered, fresh FIRs will be registered and culprits won’t be spared,” he said.