‘Even Indian constitution guarantees right to live’
Baba Umar
Srinagar, Feb 19: International Community of Red Cross (ICRC) Tuesday asserted that unarmed persons cannot be killed under any circumstances.“Unarmed persons cannot be killed under any circumstances,” an ICRC official said.
Philippe Stoll, ICRC Communication Coordinator wrote to Rising Kashmir in an email from Delhi that troopers or militants cannot “kill” a person who is wounded or not fighting anymore.“It is a violation of basic principles of law. These principles can be found in various treaties like the Geneva Conventions or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Stoll said.
He said that the same laws can be found even in the Indian constitution.“Article 21 of the Indian constitution guarantees the right to life,” he said. “Under all these laws and rules, the wounded, sick and prisoners of war come under specifically protected people,” Stoll said.
On Monday Rising Kashmir carried a report about the killing of an unarmed and wounded militant who, according to a lone eyewitness Ghulam Qadir, was shot dead by the personnel of Special Operations Group (SOG) of Police after a gunfight at Aglar in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district.
Qadir had said, he brought the militant out of the house who was little conscious and critically injured. “I saw one militant with long hair lying in one of the rooms in the rear end of the house. I could not believe that he was alive,” he had said.
Qadir had said that he held the wounded militant’s head gently and somehow managed to bring him out of the completely gutted two storied house.“As we stepped outside, the SOG men standing nearby fired a volley of bullets in the militants head as he was in my lap,” Qadir had said.
The ICRC official in his e-mail reaction to Rising Kashmir said, the killing is a violation of the basic principles of law.
Bashir Ahmad, 62, is a tall and muscular man. He had his schooling up to intermediate level and that easily helped him in getting a government job in the Agriculture Department. But in 1986, he took a voluntarily retirement. And believe it or not he left the job because of too many female employees in that department. “Frankly speaking, I can’t work with women who are stranger to me,” he says. He backs his statement from the sayings of Prophet (S.A.W) and the Quranic verses, though he is not clear. “You know what I mean to say,” he refuses to speak explicitly on the issue.
Instead of spotting all the three colours only two colours were visible. There are many who smell a rat in this whole affair. They say troopers donned in saffron and white clothes had deliberately kicked the “green” out of the tri-colour flag.