Mehbooba condemns harassment of Kashmiris in Mumbai

SRINAGAR - The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Monday condemned “the harassment of Kashmiris especially the youth in and outside the state”.

In a statement here, party president Mehbooba Mufti said ‘It was appalling that state governments had now issued blanket advisories against Kashmiris.”

The PDP chief was reacting to the reported instructions issued by ‘the Maharashtra government to its police to keep all Kashmiris in the state under watch following an alert by the Jammu and Kashmir police’.

Her outburst comes in the wake of the arrest two Kashmiris in Mumbai last month. The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad claimed the two men, who worked as oil tanker drivers, were carrying out recruitment activities for terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba in the city and like Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Mehbooba has called for ‘immediate halt to the harassment and persecution’.

Referring to numerous recent ‘incidents of harassment in different parts of the country’, Mehbooba said ’suspecting Kashmiris was prevalent for quite some time but in recent months it has assumed the dimensions of paranoia’.

This she said was ‘a direct result of the state government painting entire population of Kashmir black and branding them as terrorists and stone pelters’.

“The government had often accused peaceful demonstrators as having worked at the behest of organizations like LeT,” she said adding that “it was painful that the local police had according to press reports advised Maharashtra police to keep all Kashmiris in that state under scanner for potential terrorist activities’.

The Mumbai police had issued a security advisory to all police stations in the city and state asking for strict measures to be adopted following a specific terror alert from intelligence agencies.

The alert said that the terror outfit Indian Mujahideen (IM) was using a few Kashmiris to conduct recce of defence establishments across the state.