Outgoing Jammu and Kashmir police chief Dilbagh Singh on Saturday touched a raw nerve in Kashmir after he claimed that his five-year tenure witnessed “zero” collateral damage or civilian casualties involving the police or security forces.

“These days, people talk in the context of zeros. I feel happy when people talk in the context of zero. In the last five years, people say, and we also feel proud of it, that there has been zero collateral damage during the course of operations. It is a matter of great happiness,” Singh said at a police event in Pulwama’s Lethpora.

“If we talk of law-and-order incidents, they have also come down to zero. As of today, we see no clash with civilians or any group. If we talk of civilian casualties, by the grace of God, the figure is also running at zero and that too the figure is running from the last five years. Zero casualties in any police action. This is a matter of great pride.”

Singh, who took over as director-general of police (DGP) in September 2018, will retire on October 31. The Union home ministry has appointed Rashmi Ranjan Swain, special director-general of Jammu and Kashmir CID, as the DGP in charge.

The outgoing DGP’s tenure witnessed momentous changes in Jammu and Kashmir, including the scrapping of the special status in 2019. Though the government's alleged iron-fist policies ensured there was little street violence, militancy remained a formidable challenge for the forces as dozens of people, mostly outsiders or members of the minority community, were killed.

Jammu and Kashmir also witnessed several civilian killings where the families blamed security forces or the police.

One of the most widely reported incidents was the controversial gunfight in Srinagar in 2021 that claimed the lives of four persons, including businessmen Altaf Ahmad Bhat and Dr Mudassir Gul.

The families of Bhat and Gul claimed they were killed by a joint party of the army and the police, although a special investigation team of the police later claimed one of them was killed by militants while the other died in an alleged crossfire.

“DG sahab’s statement is like adding salt to our injury. In our case, we are convinced that Altaf sahab, a father of three kids, was killed by the forces. During our in-house meetings with the police, top officers not only accepted that but also apologised despite saying things to the contrary in public,” Bhat's relative told The Telegraph.

“In one of the news conferences in 2021, the DGP said they were not innocent. But we can vouch for Altaf sahab’s innocence. He had torture marks on his body, which means he was tortured before he was killed. It has been more than two years but we are yet to get a copy of the FIR. The police never even uploaded the FIR copy on their website, which they normally do. We also filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission but we are yet to get any response even after a year.”

In July 2020, the death of three civilians in a fake gunfight by the army in Shopian also triggered a massive political storm here. The army had initially claimed the trio were Pakistani militants but investigations later revealed that they were innocent labourers identified as Abrar Ahmed, 25, Imtiyaz Ahmed, 22, and Mohammed Ibrar, 17.

“In our case, it is established that they were killed in a staged gunfight. We got the bodies of our sons after 73 days at the direction of the court (they were buried in a graveyard reserved for militants). Captain Bhupinder Singh, who killed our sons, was given life imprisonment this year. How can he (DGP) say no civilians were killed? I can count several incidents where civilians were killed (by the forces). In fact, such things happen every year,” Abrar's father Mohammad Yousuf Chouhan said.

One more killing that attracted wide publicity was that of Bashir Ahmad Khan, who was killed in Sopore in 2020. Unattributed photographs showed Khan's three-year-old grandson Ayaad sitting on the chest of the lifeless and blood-stained body.

Police had said Khan was killed by militants but his family blamed the security forces. The family had released a video where the boy was heard saying that his grandfather was shot by the police.

When a woman asked the boy in the video, “kisne mara (who killed)”? the child replied: “Policewale ne thak thak kiya (the policeman fired).”

Raising his voice and gesturing with his left index finger to suggest a gun, the child added: “Thak, thak, thak, thak, thak kiya.”