In the last two months, Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha has handed out jobs to several families from Kashmir whose relatives were killed by militants.
On August 5, he presided over a large event in Srinagar in which he distributed appointment letters to the next of kin of 158 men and women killed by militants. Some of the deaths took place years ago, at the peak of Kashmir’s militancy. This included civilians killed because the militants accused them of being informers, or those working for the police.
Sinha is doing what many before him, including elected chief ministers and former governors, have already done – using a 1994 policy to give jobs on compassionate grounds to the next of kin of those civilians and government employees who were killed in “militancy-related action”.
But several families say the LG administration appears to have ignored one set of victims – those killed by security forces.
“This initiative feels discriminatory,” said Bilal Ahmed Bhat, the son of Mohammad Ramzan Bhat, a shopkeeper who was allegedly tortured and killed by security forces in 1996. “This healing is only for victims of militant violence while those killed by the state are not acknowledged as victims.”
A senior journalist in Kashmir, who asked not to be identified, pointed out that the compensation policy was not selective in the past. “The state did not discriminate between the victims. The only rider was that the person killed should not have been involved in militancy-related activities.”
A lawyer at High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh in Srinagar said the LG’s decisions have bred a lot of confusion. “Some families who have lost their kin in incidents where security forces were involved have been approaching me about their cases,” he told Scroll. “It’s very difficult for me to make them understand that it’s only about one side of the victims of violence.”
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.
