A Village Defence Committee (VDC) member on Thursday allegedly killed a woman and her son in Jammu’s Rajouri district, second such incident in a week, sparking protests and demand to disarm the armed civilians in the State.
Around noon, the accused, Mushtaq Ahmad, a resident of Rajouri’s Mohra Dhaveen village, barged into the house of Shamim Akhter, 35, and shot her dead along with her four-year-old son Tawheed Ahmad in Samote village.
Mr. Ahmad was arrested and booked under a criminal case. The VDC member has been reportedly stalking the woman for some time.
Last week, a National Conference (NC) youth leader, Ishtyaq Choudhary, was shot dead by Kewal Kumar Sharma, a VDC member, in Rajouri’s Kalakote area.
Constituted in 1995 to fight militants, the Village Defence Committee, with around 2,600 members, faces around 160 cases of crime, which include kidnapping and rape.
While Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh, a senior BJP leader, discounted the option of disbanding the VDCs, the Peoples Democratic Party supported disarming of the VDC members. “There is a debate to disarm these members. We condemn the dastardly attack against civilians. No one will be allowed to take the law into their own hands,” PDP leader Waheed Parra told The Hindu .
NC chief spokesperson Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi threatened to “launch an agitation if the PDP-BJP alliance continues patronising of the armed committees.”
Separatist Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Geelani expressed surprise “over the refusal of Mr. Nirmal Singh on disbanding the VDCs.”
