A police officer has been caught on camera appearing to advise the family of a six-year-old girl in Srinagar who was allegedly molested by a migrant government employee not to “play up” the matter as “our children are studying” outside Kashmir.

The inspector-rank officer is seen in the video, which has gone viral, purportedly telling a small group of people that appears to include a relative of the girl that the police had taken prompt action and that the family should now let the matter rest.

“Didn’t we approach the doctor?” the officer is heard telling a person who seems to be a relative of the girl on a roadside in the presence of a small crowd. “Was there any rape?” the policeman asks the man, who says “no”.

“We took the child to the doctor. Everything was confirmed (that no rape had taken place),” the officer says. He agrees that there had been an “attempt”, when the residents insist there had been an attempt to rape the child.

“Listen, don’t play up the issue. God save us, our children are in Jammu…. Don’t play up the issue. We have done our legal formalities,” the officer tells the gathering.

In some other videos, the residents are seen demanding severe punishment for the accused while arguing that they do not see the matter through the prism of religion.

“A monster is a monster. He can be from any religion. We just want justice. The girl belongs to a very poor family,” a local says.

The purported remarks of the officer have not gone down well with sections of Valley residents who believe the police were blackmailing the family into silence by raising the bogey of the security of Kashmiris studying elsewhere.

Tension has been simmering in Srinagar’s Soura locality after reports emerged of the child being allegedly molested earlier this week.

The police on Saturday broke its silence on the incident after it apparently started taking a “communal colour”. The incident involves a 35-year-old lab technician who had migrated to Jammu at the height of militancy and returned after getting a government job in Kashmir under the Prime Minister’s package for migrants.

“There is certain news going on in social media about rape of a minor girl, it is clarified that no such incident happened,” the police said in a statement.

“Some unscrupulous elements are trying to give this incident a communal colour by giving motivated statements with intention to create communal divide. Public is requested not to pay heed to such rumours,” it added.

The police said they had received a complaint “about a suspected molestation of a minor girl” two days ago and registered an FIR “under relevant sections of the IPC and the POCSO Act”.

“The accused was also arrested immediately,” the statement said, claiming that there had not been any complaint of rape from the family members and that a “medical examination” had corroborated” that such an atrocity had not been committed on the girl.

The incident comes at a time when The Kashmir Files, a film on the alleged “genocide” of Pandits in the Valley, has deepened the already fragile fault lines between the communities.