New Delhi | The Supreme Court on Friday issued a notice to Central and 10 state government in a petition seeking steps to prevent attacks on Kashmiri students. The states include Maharashtra, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Meghalaya, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand.
The Top court has also asked the Nodal Officers to take steps to prevent acts of intimidation, threat, assault, social boycott etc. The bench also asked the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to give wide publicity to nodal officers so that they can be approached by those facing such incidents.
The Supreme Court bench comprising of CJI Gogoi said,” The chief secretaries, the DGPs and the Delhi Police Commissioner are directed to take prompt and necessary action to prevent incidents of threat, assault, social boycott etc. against Kashmiris and other minorities.”
Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves appearing for the petitioner claimed that at the outset, 10 more incidents of assaults have taken place in various states after filing of the petition and necessary directions be issued urgently to stop them. The petition said,” These incidents are a part of organised hate campaign against Muslims and Kashmiri, most cases which are fabricated and the hysteria that now surrounds India has been engineered to gain political mileage.”
Attorney General (AG) KK Venugopal, appearing for the Centre said the ministry had issued the requisite advisory to states and Union territories (UTs) on this issue on February 17. “The Centre has already issued advisory to all states and UTs on February 17 but we can’t tell the states about their specific actions that can be taken in such cases because law and order is a state subject,” the AG said.
The bench has now listed the matter for further hearing on next Wednesday.
Various Kashmiri students were specifically targeted and attacked in various states after 40 CRPF personnel were killed in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district in a terrorist attack when a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist identified as Adil Ahmed rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into the bus they were travelling in. More than 2,500 Central Reserve Police Force personnel, many of them returning from leave to rejoin duty in the Valley, were travelling in the convoy of 78 vehicles when they were ambushed on the Srinagar-Jammu highway at Latoomode in Awantipora.
As an independent media platform, we do not take advertisements from governments and corporate houses. It is you, our readers, who have supported us on our journey to do honest and unbiased journalism. Please contribute, so that we can continue to do the same in future.
