Pro-India politician and People’s Conference leader Sajad Lone claimed on Wednesday night that the Jammu and Kashmir administration had rounded up hundreds of people, “including grandfathers and fathers”, in the past 24 hours, calling it a “macro-punishment” of Kashmiris.
Lone’s claim came as Kashmir was rocked by three targeted attacks by militants, leaving a cop and a migrant worker dead and a police inspector critically injured.
If true, it would be the first time after the 2019 scrapping of the special status that so many people have been rounded up in such a short duration — although arrests are a daily feature here. Thousands were arrested during and after the 2019 revocation of Article 370 provisions.
The government’s iron-fist policies make it difficult for Kashmir families to go public with their grievances.
Over 24 hours had passed but police had not reacted to the statement of Lone, who was a minister in the previous PDP-BJP government and is close to the BJP.
Unrelated to his claim, the police said some militant associates were arrested on Wednesday.
“In the name of OGWs (overground workers of militants), hundreds of people have been rounded up in the last 24 hours,” Lone said in a statement on Wednesday night.
“These are people who may have had a past in militancy but are now law-abiding citizens for the last two decades. They are grandfathers, fathers and livelihood earners,” he added.
In security parlance, OWGs are those who arrange “logistics” and “movement support mechanisms” for militants. But the security establishment has in recent years made efforts to extend the term to include many more people — many Kashmiri “prominent civil society members and their diaspora in particular”.
“Macro-policing is not the answer. We are all pained with the incidents of violence. But good policing would mean micro-investigation, not macro-punishment,” Lone said.
“How can an entire generation be punished and for how long? For a mistake that they made, are they going to be punished eternally for all times to come?”
Lone’s spokesman Adnan Ashraf told The Telegraph they can confirm 100 to 150 people known to them have been detained.
“We believe the number is more than that. We alone received 60 to 70 calls from people from across Kashmir. I have a relative in Handwara who is 33 and has no militancy past. He too has been picked up. He works almost all the time in Punjab,” Ashraf said. “Of course we understand there was a spike in violence this week, but when was this place violence-free?”
Lone criticised the alleged detentions and asked what was the “concept of reintegration in a conflict”. He said the process of arresting OGWs was not new but had been a rule in the last three decades in which “all governments are culpable for this crime”.
“But we need closure,” he said.
“It is a humble appeal. Please do not go for macro-punishment. A father or a grandfather who is now a senior citizen being hauled to the local police station is a humiliating experience. How would you expect the youngsters in the family to react to such events?” Lone said.
He said a lot of people had been identified as OGWs during Farooq Abdulah’s six-year rule from 1996 to 2002.
“They would add anybody who didn’t vote for them, especially during 1996 to 2002. If the current administration is revisiting everything done during the previous governmental tenures, why not revisit these lists and separate fact from fiction?” he asked.
Lone’s PC and Farooq’s National Conference are known rivals. The NC has not reacted to his allegations.
Lone said Kashmiris were exiting a “vicious cycle of violence”. “These macro-policing events are impediments to the exiting process,” he said. “Investment in India is Investment in the Youth. Don’t turn them away. Let incidents of humiliation not cloud their judgement.”
