Kashmir - Dental surgeon beheaded in broad daylight

Daily Excelsior ^ | Oct 9 2006 | Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

[swarthyguy]

SRINAGAR, Oct 8: Taking advantage of the losing grip of Police, BSF as well as Army in Sopore, militants have kidnapped and mercilessly slaughtered a young dental surgeon within 24 hours of beheading a Territorial Army recruit in the apple-rich north Kashmir township. More confident this time, militants have slit the throat of the young dental surgeon and father of three kids with seven shaving blades in broad daylight after subjecting him to untold brutality for about two hours.

Civilian sources revealed to the EXCELSIOR that the local Police Station responded to a report and recovered the dead body of 35-year-old Dr Mushtaq Ahmed Shah S/o Masoom Shah R/o Zachaldara (presently Braripora, Handwara) from corn fields in Nopora Kalan locality of the appletown of Sopore in the morning today. They said that unidentified militants, armed with AK-47 guns and pistols, had tied the surgeon in captivity to a tree and mercilessly tortured him for about two hours from 2.00 p.m to 4.00 p.m on Saturday. According to these sources, some people working at the nearby fields had approached the militants with an appeal of mercy after hearing the shrieks and screaming of the dental surgeon but the militants shouted them to retreat. They finally slaughtered the doctor with sharp shaving blades.

While senior Police officials in Sopore did not respond to phone calls, their juniors confirmed that seven blood soaked shaving blades were recovered from the site of occurrence. They said that Police learned about the gruesome killing last evening but went to recover the dead body today. According to them, the surgeon had been almost decapitated and his head was attached to the torso with just an inch of skin. They said that a note, purportedly scribbled by a militant outfit, was also found on the dead body.

After a decade-long semblance of normality, militants are currently in the process of regaining control over the all-important Sopore town, which had been a stronghold of Hizbul Mujahideen and other guerrilla groups in 1990-94 period. It was during this period that--- with the massive support of alienated people, particularly those from pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami---the Hizb militants like late Majeed Dar and a Sudanese Jihadi Ibn-i-Masood had enjoyed total control on Sopore. After security forces eliminated a large number of militants here in 1993-94, few incidents of violence were witnessed in Sopore. However, after striking on their combat and civilian targets with hit-and-run grenade attacks for several months this year, militants in Sopore have now begun to act in broad daylight. They have killed the young dental surgeon within 24 hours of beheading a Territorial Army recruit whose head was taken all the way to the center of the town and dropped there.

In follow up to a broad daylight drive of moral policing, in which several people were stripped and paraded on streets for their alleged offences of promiscuity and gambling, militants have enacted today's brutality just furlongs away from the guarded residence of the naked mystic, Ahad Sahib, who survived a grenade attack earlier this year. Two devotees had died and 15 others sustained injuries in that attack on June 22.

An investigation by Excelsior revealed that after completing his BDS, Dr Mushtaq Ahmed Shah had been appointed as a junior dental surgeon by State Health Department. Within a couple of years of his appointment, he went to Saudi Arabia and worked there as a dental surgeon for about seven years. It was during this period that he shifted his residence from Zachaldara and raised a Rs one-crore house in Braripora outskirts of Handwara town near Fruit Mandi. With his wife, Kulsoom, and three young children (an eight-year-old son and two young daughters), Dr Shah had been living at this house after returning from Saudi Arabia about a year ago. His services in Health Department had been terminated but he had been reinstated and posted at Public Health Centre Langet. Informed sources said that on Saturday he had left for duty as usual in his own car but before reaching Langet requested an acquaintance over telephone to record his leave for a day.

When his father Masoom Shah was lodging a missing report at Handwara Police Station today, Sopore Police communicated to Handwara Police that Dr Mushtaq Ahmed Shah's slaughtered body had been spotted and recovered from a locality in the town. Later today, Dr Shah's body was buried at his ancestral village in Zachaldara. His brutal killing, that happened in the holy month of Ramazan, spread shockwaves in a vast locality but for obvious fear of militant reprisals nobody dared to register protest in public.

Inquiries revealed that Dr Shah was a close friend of the separatist People’s Conference leader, Sajjad Lone, whose veteran politician father, late Abdul Gani Lone, had long back got the Government job of a forest guard to Shah's father Masoom Shah. The Shahs had multiple political connections but they had never associated themselves with militants, counter-insurgents or security forces. One and all in Handwara area insisted that it was not a political killing. While Dr Shah's father continues to be the Vice President of Rajwar Block in the mainstream National Conference, his Handwara-based wife, Kulsoom, happens to be a not-so-distant relative of the former Forest Minister and MLA Handwara, Sofi Mohiuddin. Residents said it was Sofi who had got him from Saudi Arabia and also got him reinstated on the terminated Government job.

Meanwhile, official sources in north Kashmir said that some young children found an explosive device and began fiddling with it near Chitti Bandi hamlet in Bandipore today. It exploded, causing injuries to three young students, namely Ashfaq Ahmed Mir S/o Mohammad Yusuf Mir, Altaf Ahmed Mir S/o Zakarullah and Aijaz Ahmed Mir S/o Abdul Ahad Mir. They were evacuated to a local hospital. Critically injured, Aijaz Ahmed Mir was referred to a Srinagar hospital. He was responding to treatment till late this evening.

[Loud Mime]

I agree.....too much levity concerning such a horrible crime.

So much evil is focused on one part of the world....

[ari dubov]

awful