India withdraws security of Kashmiri leaders after Pulwama attack

Directives for immediate withdrawing of Hurriyat leaders' official facilities also issued

LAHORE: Following the Pulwama deadly attack, the Indian government has withdrawn the security of five Kashmiri leaders and all public facilities extended to them.

A notification of dropping the security cover has also been released by the Indian ministry of interior.

According to the communique, security granted to five Hurriyat leaders – Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Abdul Ghani Butt, Bilal Loon, Hashim Qureshi and Shabbir Shah – has been withdrawn at the same time directives for immediately withdrawing official facilities extended to the leaders has also been issued.

Pakistan strongly rejected allegations levelled by the Modi government and media linking the February 14 suicide attack in occupied Kashmir which killed at least 44 Indian paramilitary forces.



“We strongly reject any insinuation by elements in the Indian media and government that seek to link the attack to Pakistan without investigations,” the Foreign Office (FO) said in a statement.

A suicide car bomber rammed a bus carrying troopers belonging to Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in the deadliest attack on Indian occupying forces there since 2002.



The suicide bombing outside Srinagar, reportedly claimed by the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) group, saw explosives packed inside a van rip through buses in a convoy of 78 vehicles, carrying some 2,500 members of the paramilitary force.

In a comedy of errors, the Indian media in its usual rhetoric to blame Pakistan for the Pulwama attack linked late Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Rasheed Ghazi.

It’s important to note that, Rasheed was killed in 2007 during the Lal Masjid operation launched by then president Pervez Musharraf.

Reacting on the Indian media’s gaffe, Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Mazari wrote on Twitter, saying: “Indian media really needs to do some fact checking even when they are indulging in blame game propaganda. “

Indian media really needs to do some fact checking even when they are indulging in blame game propaganda. This man lies buried in Roshan, distt Rajanpur since over a decade! pic.twitter.com/SUjgiZth6t

— Shireen Mazari (@ShireenMazari1) February 17, 2019

On February 14, a suicide car bomber rammed a bus carrying troopers belonging to Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in the deadliest attack on Indian occupying forces there since 2002.

According to Reuters' report, Adil Ahmad Dar, 20, from the village of Lethipora in occupied Kashmir, rammed a car full of explosives into the convoy.

“We are in pain in the same way the families of the soldiers are,” said farmer Ghulam Hassan Dar, adding that his son had been radicalised after police stopped him and his friends on the way home from school in 2016.

“They were stopped by the [Indian] troops and beaten up and harassed,” Dar said, adding that the students were accused of stone-pelting. “Since then, he wanted to join the militants.”