Thaindian News

Srinagar, Dec 20 (IANS) In a significant development, Jammu and Kashmir’s State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) Tuesday ordered the arrest of a senior police officer heading a special investigating team (SIT) that was probing the disappearance of a local youth in 2007.

The SHRC issued arrest warrants against Tanveer Jeelani, deputy superintendent of police (headquarters) south Kashmir Anantnag district, for failing to comply with the directions of the commission.

“The SHRC today ordered the arrest of the police officer and seizure of all the investigation record to be produced before the commission,” sources in the SHRC told IANS.

The SHRC has ordered that all the investigation records, including case diaries etc. prepared by the SIT headed by the police officer up to July 4, 2011, be produced before the rights panel.

The SIT had been constituted to probe the 2007 disappearance of a local youth named Nazir Ahmad Mir, who belonged to Zadoor village of Anantnag district.

Gul Muhammad Mir, the father of the disappeared youth, had filed two petitions before the SHRC in 2008 and 2009 seeking the whereabouts of his son who allegedly had been called by his fiance to the local bus stand in 2007 from where some unidentified people kidnapped him in a waiting auto-rickshaw.

Gul Muhammad Mir had also approached the state high court that had given police three weeks’ time to complete the investigations into the youth’s disappearance.

Source said the SIT headed by Jeelani had closed the investigations as “youth untraced”. The SHRC has now sought all the relevant records and evidences based on which the case had been closed by the SIT.

This is the first time since the rights panel was constituted in Jammu and Kashmir in 1997 that it has ordered arrest of any senior police officer for non-compliance of the panel’s directions.

However, when asked about the arrest warrant, a senior police officer in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district said, “We have no information of the order.”

Sources in the SHRC said the panel has ordered its Senior Superintendent Police (human rights) to execute the warrant.

The SIT was constituted earlier this year.

Sources in the SHRC said they had been constantly summoning Jeelani since July to present himself before the panel, but he did not respond. The last time he was summoned was in November.