Muzamil Jaleel
NEW DELHI, June 11: At the centre of Major (retd) Avtar Singh’s alleged killing spree in California Saturday is believed to lie incidents of 16 years ago when the then Territorial Army officer reportedly plotted several murders led by that of noted Kashmiri human rights activist Jaleel Andrabi.
Two months before he was taken away by Army personnel and later found dead, Andrabi had got unusual visitors at his house on January 29, 1996. The two men had claimed their father was in hospital after being set on fire by the Army, and that he should come with them.
Andrabi smelt a rat and had refused. The next day the men, accompanied like the previous day by three armed men who waited outside in a lane, had returned. As Andrabi’s wife Riffat went out to meet them, Andrabi had taken their picture.
Andrabi at the time talked of counter-insurgents working for the Army following him, and claimed he had seen one of them, Sikander Ganai, even inside the high court. Apprehensive about his safety, Andrabi had left for Delhi. He had returned only after a month to Srinagar to join his family for Eid.
Not too long after, his fears had come true. On March 8, 1996, as Andrabi was driving home with his wife on the airport road, he was stopped and taken away by Army personnel. Riffat tried chasing them but couldn’t. She approached the nearby police station but they refused to register a case and instead promised to check with the local (Rashtriya Rifles) unit.
On March 27, 1996, Andrabi’s brother Arshad was called by the police to identify a body recovered from Jhelum. It was Andrabi’s.
The arrest and subsequent disappearance of Andrabi had already led to a massive public outcry and a formal case was registered on March 14, 1996, under the directions of the high court. A Special Investigating Team (SIT) was set up to probe the case.
The SIT first looked for the counter-insurgents living on the premises of the 35 RR unit headquartered in Budgam, in particular Ganai. Days later, on April 5, they got news of five bodies being found near Pampore on the Srinagar-Jammu highway. They were identified as Ganai, his three associates and a taxi driver.
Ganai’s wife Hameeda later told the SIT, as per its report, that the counter-insurgent had gone to meet Maj Avtar Singh along with another counter-insurgent, Ashraf Khan from Baramulla.
With the arrest of Khan in August 1996, the police believed it had cracked the case. In his statement before a judicial magistrate, Khan said: “In March 1996, Major Avtar Singh along with Sikandar Ganai had brought with them a person wearing coat, pant and tie into the camp. Six persons namely Sultan, Balbir Singh, Doctor Vaid, Mushtaq and Hyder were also present there. Heated exchange of words (arguments) took place between Avtar Singh and apprehended person, which irritated Avtar Singh and others. He was beaten and confined in a room… After that Avtar Singh came out in the lawn and asked me if I knew the name of the person confined in the room. When I replied in the negative, Major Avtar Singh told me that he was leading advocate Jaleel Andrabi who propagated against the Army and assisted militants and that is why he had been apprehended. ‘We will eliminate him’.”
Khan claimed to have later seen Army personnel load a gunny bag onto an Army truck and leave the camp. After a few days, the body of Andrabi was recovered.
Army representatives told the court that Major Singh was not employed by the Army any longer and that he had not committed the offence “in his official capacity”.
Justice Bilal Nazki, who had ordered the setting up of the SIT, was soon transferred out of Srinagar. In an interview with The Indian Express, he said that once he was transferred, “the high court didn’t take any interest”.
On the other hand, Singh was mysteriously able to procure travel documents and left the country even as the court had ordered that his passport be impounded.
Apart from Andrabi’s killing and the subsequent murder of four counter-insurgents who may have witnessed the same, the police claim to have found the involvement of Maj Avtar Singh in five more cases of murder. In one case, a young man was picked up from Ikhrajpora in Srinagar and killed because Singh “suspected him to be having an affair with his wife’s sister”. Singh belonged to Haryana but was married in a Kashmiri Sikh family.
In another case, the police said a tailor from a local Sikh family in Mehjoor Nagar had disappeared after being picked up by Singh.
(Indian Express)
