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Basharat Peer in New Delhi
Four days have passed since an overzealous Delhi Police arrested Sheikh Abdul Rashid, Superintendent of Police, Baramulla, Jammu and Kashmir, suspecting the 50-year-old police officer of Kashmiri origin as a potential militant.
And the Jammu and Kashmir government is not even aware of it despite the prominent display of the faux pas in the media.
When rediff.com asked C Phonsukh, Home Secretary, Jammu and Kashmir, as to what is the stand of the state government on the 5 hour long illegal detention of a senior Jammu and Kashmir police officer by Delhi Police, he said, "I am not even aware of it. I cannot say anything about it off the cuff."
Sheikh Abdul Rashid, the Superintendent of Prisons, Baramulla had come to Delhi on July 29, on a home ministry invitation to attend a three day seminar on Youth and Drug Abuse at National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Sciences, Rohini, North Delhi.
After having dinner at a Kashmiri Pandit friend's house at Vasant Vihar, he stayed for the night at his cousin's Vasant Kunj flat. The next morning before he could leave to attend the seminar, the Delhi Police was knocking his doors.
"It was around 11-11.30 am and as I opened the doors I found two policemen standing there. They barged in and started checking the flat as if they had found some top militant leader. I told them I am a police officer and showed them my police identity card as well as the invitation to the seminar but they dismissed it off in a rather brute manner," Rashid told rediff.com.
"I was shocked and hurt at their behaviour, especially the head constable Mahavir Singh. They told me even militants who were responsible for the Red Fort shoot-out had documents like this and I was taken to the Vasant Kunj police station," he adds.
After five hours as a suspected militant at the police station, the Deputy Commissioner of Police, South West District, Taj Hasan, who had got his message for help intervened and Rashid was released.
At the Vasant Kunj police station, his demand for registration of a FIR for illegal confinement was rejected by the additional station house officer Gopi Chand.
Once out of the police station, he informed the National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Sciences authorities about the incident believing that they would inform his parent organisation -Jammu and Kashmir police.
But they did not.
Now, when reports of the brute conduct of Delhi Police have started coming out in the media, senior officers have rushed to Rashid apologising for the wrong done and promising action against the erring policemen.
"Infact they were trying to persuade me to play down the matter," said Rashid
"Quite a few militants used to come to me wanting to surrender. Now the same militants say we will not be accepted in India as the police gets paranoid at the sight of a Kashmiri youth," Rashid said.
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