Ever since his second son, Burhan Muzafar, joined the Hizbul Mujahideen in 2011, Muzafar Ahmad Wani, Principal of a higher secondary school in the Tral area of south Kashmir, was mentally prepared for a procession at his gates, bringing his militant son’s body home.
The procession arrived on Monday night, with a body wrapped in blood-stained rags. Only, it was the body of his eldest son, Khalid Muzafar Wani, who had left home in the morning and was killed in an alleged gun battle with the Army.
“Why did they kill Khalid? He was not a militant,” Mr. Wani said. “They should have fought my militant son who was armed. They should have killed him if they could. Why Khalid when he had no guns on him?”
Tension is palpable in Tral a day after Khalid’s killing at Kamla Top Forest, with boys protesting on the streets. More than 30 protesters were injured, and some were shot, locals said. The police said 20 of their personnel were injured in stone-throwing. The Army said it came across a group of militants in the forest, leading to a gun battle in which Khalid was killed and three of his friends arrested. Khalid was an over-ground worker (militant sympathiser), it added.
Army, police officer differ over Khalid's 'terror links'
While the Army says Khalid Wani, who was killed in a gun battle at Kamla Top Forest on Monday, was a militant sympathiser, the Jammu and Kashmir Police say they cannot confirm if he and his three friends arrested had joined militancy. “It has been confirmed that Khalid Wani, who has been operating as an over-ground worker, had taken the three youth, who were later arrested by the police, to meet [his brother] Burhan [Muzafar] for their recruitment into terrorist tanzeem. The incident has thus prevented the three youth from being misguided by the late Khalid Wani into joining the militant ranks,” an Army statement said.
Inspector-General of Police Javed Gilani said the autopsy had been conducted and report expected in a few days. Once the report was out, the facts around the death would become clearer. Khalid’s family dismissed the Army’s statement as a lie. “How could they arrest the other three boys … ? They knew who Khalid was and it was a targeted killing since they could not get his brother,” his father, Muzafar Ahmad Wani, told The Hindu. “For years, the police and the Army have been forcing us to spy on our son [Burhan], to poison him if and when he comes home, to tip them off about him, but today they have killed my other son.”
Khalid (24), an MA Economics student, worked as a part-time computer operator at a laboratory in the neighbourhood.
His younger brother, Burhan, turned a militant when he was a 16-year-old and brought upon his family an endless string of daily raids by the police and the Army and regular detentions. The people of Tral said Khalid and his friends had, in fact, gone to the forest to meet Burhan. They said Khalid had taken biryani and some other food for his brother. “They killed him in cold blood and dressed him in clothes that were not his,” Mr. Wani said. “Why would my son wear an Army vest? And the phiran on his body was not his at all.”
