All Parties Hurriyat Conference Azad Jammu and Kashmir (APHC-AJK) chapter Altaf Hussain Wani has said that Kotbhalwal jail, Jammu, has become a new death trap for hapless Kashmiri and Pakistani prisoners. According to Kashmir Media Service, Altaf Hussain Wani in a statement issued in Islamabad, taking a strong exception to killing of under trial prisoners in staged encounters at the hands of the Indian army, said it is quite ridiculous to see that prisoners are being used as scapegoats and killed by in fake encounters after being labelled as militants.
Terming the assertions of Additional Director General of Police, Jammu zone, as a cock and bull story, he said Mohammad Ali Hussain was killed in a fake encounter the way Zia Mustafa, a citizen of Azad Kashmir, was killed last year. “Zia was also lodged in the same jail. He was taken out from the jail and rushed down to the woods in Bhatta Durrian area of Poonch district where he was killed during a so-called cordon and search operation.”
The murder of Hussain alias Jehangir, he said, was conducted in the same fashion. “Like Zia Mustafa, Hussain was also driven out of the jail in the dead of night and later killed in the Phallian Mandal area near LoC”, Wani added.
The killing of prisoners one after the other, he said, had sent shock waves down the spine of prisoners logged in the Kot Bhalwal jail, which, he said, has become a new death trap for under trial Kashmiri and Pakistani prisoners booked under trumped up charges. —INP
