The family of deceased teacher Rizwan Asad Pandit, 28, who died in the police custody last week, has called for a judicial probe into the incident, as Valley two top teachers’ associations on Friday supported the family and also sought justice in the case.
“My brother’s spine was broken as per the report of the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital. The body has bruises and cuts all over. Even on the head and the face, the wounds were visible. His vitals were damaged. Are they signs of a man escaping from the police custody?” said the victim’s elder Mubashir Assad said.
Pandit was a post-graduate in Physics and ran a coaching institute and also taught at a nearby school and a varsity. He was picked up by the police’s special counter-insurgency cell from Srinagar on Sunday and his body was handed over to the family on Tuesday. Pandit was also a member of now-banned Jamaat-e-Islami and was first detained in August last year and later released in January this year.
The family termed the death as “a cold blooded custodial killing”. “We will take the legal route to get justice,” said the family.
A spokesman of the Islamic University Faculty Association (IUFA), a body of teachers at Islamic University of Science and Technology, said the deceased “worked as a guest faculty in the varsity’s Polytechnic College in 2018.”
“Pandit’s custodial killing is outrageous and a tremendous loss to education. We demanding immediate justice,” said the spokesman.
The Association also expressed dismay over the delay in the dispensation of justice in the alleged custodial killing of another teacher, Shabir Ahmad Mango, a college lecturer who was allegedly killed in police custody on August 17, 2016. “Such gory cases of the alleged custodial killings of teachers have caused an immense damage to the intellectual capital of the education sector in the State,” the spokesman added.
The Kashmir University Teachers’ Association (KUTA), an association of teachers from Kashmir University, said, in a statement, “Such treatment to the ‘nation builders’ on sustained basis does not augur well for the peace and stability in the State.”
