Asif Shahbaz/Riyaz Ul Khaliq

KL NEWS NETWORK

SRINAGAR

The volatile Palhallan town of North Kashmir’s Baramulla district is shattered due to fresh arrest spree by police and SOG which is giving sleepless nights and panic days to the locals.

Locals said the Jammu and Kashmir Police and SOG are conducting regular raids to arrest locals especially youths from the town which has scared Palhallan youths to venture out of town.

The locals in the area are living in constant fear.

According to reports, Police have so far arrested two dozen of youths and few elderly persons instead of their younger brothers or children.

Some of the arrested youths were identified as Parvaiz Ah Gojree, Maroof Ahmad Rather, Umar Farooq Sheikh, Adil Ahmad Gojree, Nazir Ahmed Gojree, Naseer Nabi Bhat, Ab Majeed Tantary, Basit Ahmad Pir, Zahoor Ahmad Teli, Ab Aziz Dar, Arif Ahmad Lone, Mohammad Lateef Tantray and Danish Ahmed. All are residents of Palhallan.

Police alos released few youth including Aqib Ahmad Khan S/o Gh Rasool Khan, Imran Ahmad Khan S/o Mohammad Akbar Khan few days back.

“Majority of youth were arrested youths are innocents, they are booked under false charges. These all arrested youths are educated and it is police who are playing with their carriers by imposing false charges,” a senior resident said.

Despite fear of arrests, people accused police of harassment by calling them to police stations along with their wards which has given sleepless nights and long panic days to the locals which in turn has affected business and social life in the area.

Local residents have appealed authorities to look into this grave concern matter.

When contacted PDP lawmaker representing Palhallan, Imran Reza Ansari said, “this is a news for me, although I am keeping close watch on Palhallan.”

Imran, who is minister for Information Technology in PDP-BJP coalition government, said, “only yesterday people from Palhallan met, however, they did not inform me about it but I am certainly looking in to the matter.”

Senior Superintendent of Police, Baramulla told Kashmir Life that police shall take “every action to uphold law”.

SSP Imtiyaz Hussain while negating the claims that detainees are innocents said, “whosoever we have arrested is involved in violating the law. We have videographed them and showed these videos to their parents.”

Hussain further said, “these arrested youth, around 20, are mostly drug addicts and only this morning we have arrested on youth who was carrying around 150 grams of Charas in his pocket.”

Hussain claimed that people of Palhallan are “happy” that police acted against these “trouble mongers”.

“We have arrested them on proper FIRs. They are hard core stone pelters and they are few individuals,” Hussain added.

Quoting an incident, Hussain said, “these people recently extorted Rs 5000 from a non-Kashmiri driver in the dead of night.” “It has become impossible to cross Palhallan to reach Baramulla in late evenings.”

Hussain asserted, “we shall uphold law in any case and still around two dozen people are at large and we shall be arresting them.” “And let me say it, no student has been arrested. Either they are school drop-outs or failures.”

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