Ali Sukhanver--- 
Militancy is no doubt the most grievous threat to the calm and peace of society all over the world. It is something very encouraging that the whole world has joined hands together to curb the menace of extremism but things become very horrible when at some places the ‘Allegation of Militancy’  is used as a weapon against the ‘ Persona-Non-Grata’. The only target of such malicious activity is nothing but to malign the repute and credibility of the individuals, groups, organizations and the countries not in ones good-books. The worst example of this malpractice could be noticed in the Indian Illegally Occupied State of Jammu and Kashmir where the Indian troops themselves are involved in the cruelest violation of human rights. In the mid of this May the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Kashmir Vijay Kumar claimed in a press statement that the police got information about two terrorists hiding somewhere in the Khanmoh area of Srinagar. In search of those terrorists a joint team of Jammu and Kashmir Police and the Central Reserve Police Force was assigned to launch a search operation to find out the terrorists. He claimed that during that search operation the security team had an encounter with the wanted terrorists in which at least two ‘terrorists’ were killed. The IGP blamed that the deceased terrorists were affiliated with the Al-Badr terror outfit.
 On the other hand the residents of Khanmoh in Srinagar have categorically refuted the claim that the two youth brutally murdered by the Indian security forces were militants and had links with any militant organization. They said that it was a clear case of fake encounter and this practice of murdering the Kashmiri youth has ever been a practice of the Indian troops in the illegally occupied territory. They told the media that the gunshot-wounds on the dead bodies were mainly on legs and feet which indicated that it was not a firefight. It appears that the youth had tried to flee and were shot in the legs and after getting hold of them they were killed. Different eye-witness to this horrible incident said that the youth were totally unarmed and it was a false claim of the Indian army that two pistols and grenades were recovered from them. If they were the so-called militants, they would have proper fighting weapons in their possession and they would have certainly given a tough-time to the security-forces. Moreover a white bandage on injured left hand of one of the innocent boys was a strong proof that before this ‘encounter’ the security forces had kept them in their custody. 
According to the media reports, the security authorities claimed that during the encounter the parents of the murdered ‘militants’ appealed to them to surrender but they didn’t listen to their appeals. But the local people reject this cock and bull story concocted by the security authorities. They said that their parents were not in the area; they were in Pulwama and the boys had just come to Khanmoh to meet their friends and relatives. Unfortunately the Indian authorities in the region could give no justification and no explanation to the allegations levied upon them by the local people.
Under the cover of fake encounters, killing of Kashmiri youth is not a new practice. In the name of so-called battle against the militants and militancy, every year hundreds of young boys and even girls are brutally murdered by the Indian forces and every time the official statement says “It was a police-encounter though we tried our best to avoid it.” Last year in the month of July, in the Amshipora area, three young boys were shot to death in the same way in a fake encounter by the Indian security forces. According to the details in the village of Amshipora, Indian military personnel of the Rashtriya Rifles killed three Kashmiri laborers on 18th of July 2020; one of them was a minor. Initially the Indian Army claimed that the three victims were foreign terrorists who opened fire on a security team without any reason. The matter was somewhat full of ambiguities and media-men were raising a lot of questions on credibility of the security forces, so an Inquiry Commission was set up for the detailed investigations. The Inquiry Commission said in its findings that it was simply a fake-encounter staged by the Indian Army. The ‘terrorists’ were in fact laborers working for daily wages in local orchards. Their murder was staged to claim a cash bounty of 20 Lakh rupees equivalent to US$28,000. This is the amount granted by the Indian Army as a reward for killing militants. Reports say that an Indian Military Court is currently conducting a court-martial proceeding against Army Captain Bhoopendra Singh of the Rashtriya Rifles, as well as an unnamed non-commissioned officer whereas proceedings against two civilian informants are ongoing in local courts in Kashmir. The military authorities could have been buried Amshipora Murder under the dust of time but the media did not let them do it. 
Lawaypora fake encounter is also a case of the same type. That fake-encounter occurred on 30th December 2020. One of the so-called three militants was 19 year old Aijaz Maqbool a resident of south Kashmir’s Pulwama District. He was a fresh graduate of Government Degree College Pulwama. The other two included Athar Mushtaq a college student from Putrigam village and a 22 year old mason Zubair Ahmad. Their families say that the three youngsters were abducted by security forces and killed in cold blood. The families claim that all of them were leading normal lives till the news of their fake-encounter came in. It is also a point to be pondered over that the name of none of the three was in any list of militants and none of them had any record in any police station. It was pointed out in media reports that the motive behind this fake-encounter was also the same traced in Amshipora fake-encounter incident; the prize money. It is something very pathetic that in greed and lust of prize-money, the Indian Security personnel are slaughtering the innocent children of those people who have even never touched a gun. Certainly the human rights organizations would do something to save the wretched Kashmiris from this cruel tyranny.