Rakib Altaf
SRINAGAR: A prominent pro-India political group in Kashmir, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has urged New Delhi to conduct an unbiased probe into Thursday’s twin blasts in the southern city of Hyderabad.
It has warned the government not to look for scapegoats among Muslims.
The PDP president, Mehbooba Mufti has expressed shock over the blasts and conveyed her condolences to the families of the victims. She said those responsible should be given the most severe punishment.
However, she has warned the authorities not to go for witch-hunting of the Muslim community as happened before.
She said members of the Muslim community had been victimized after the Makkah Masjid, Ajmer Sharief, Malegaon and Samjhota Express blasts. The charges against the victims, she said, “proved fabricated and false, but only after they had spent years in custody”.
“No body must be harassed for his religious affiliation,” she said.
Mufti lamented that Kashmiri youths residing in different states of India become the first suspects after every such incident.
“Those arrested in the Lajpat Nagar blast took more than seventeen years to establish their innocence and in the process a few families were devastated and the implicated young men lost the very meaning of their promising lives,” she said.
“Even now scores of youth from Kashmir are imprisoned in jails across the country, many of them reportedly in Delhi’s Tihar jail alone on charges that remain to be proved.”
Mufti said a preconceived approach to incidents like the Hyderabad blasts create reasons for alienation among Muslims and reinforced their sense of victimhood.
Besides, she said, the prejudiced approach stops the police from reaching the real culprits.
She urged the government of India and all Indian political parties to make sure that investigating agencies acted professionally and did not look for scapegoats.
The PDP is the main opposition in Kashmir’s lawmaking assembly. It is headed by India’s former Home Minister, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed.
