Two police officers arrested over Kashmir killings
Source: Reuters
SRINAGAR, India, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Two senior policemen have been arrested in Kashmir, accused of staging fake gun battles in which at least three people, whom they falsely claimed were separatist militants, died, police said on Saturday. The arrest of the two high-ranking police officers came after police exhumed bodies of three people last week as part of a probe into their deaths. The dead included a carpenter, a Muslim priest and a street vendor, who went missing late last year and according to police were killed in Ganderbal area on the outskirts of Srinagar, summer capital of Indian Kashmir. "Based on evidence, we were able to arrest the former senior superintendent and deputy superintendent of Ganderbal, Farooq Ahmad, Deputy Inspector General, told reporters. Last week, two policemen were arrested for killing the carpenter, a father of five, after they staged a fake gun battle claiming that he was a militant. Public outrage over the death of carpenter Abdul Rehman Padder -- which erupted in violent protests on Friday -- has forced police to probe other similar killings. India accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants in its part of the disputed territory and later pushing the combatants into Indian Kashmir to fight security forces. A separatist revolt in the scenic region has killed more than 40,000 people since it began in 1989, officials say. Human rights groups put the toll at about 60,000 dead or missing. Mohammad Yasin Malik, a senior separatist leader, said he planned to begin a three-day hunger strike and called for a general strike on Tuesday against the "fake gun battles". "If India fails to stop the human rights violations in the next two and a half months, I will launch the fast-unto-death," Malik, head of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) told a news conference. The JKLF which declared a ceasefire with Indian security forces in 1994, says it is fighting politically for Kashmir's independence from both India and Pakistan.
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