Hurriyat (G) rebuff police on Hawala claims

Srinagar: Hurriyat Conference (G) Monday rebutted the police claims that its in-charge of Legal cell, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat was involved in a Hawala racket, saying Bhat had been implicated in a “false” case and the amalgam’s legal cell utilizes “donations from ordinary Kashmiris to pursue detainees’ cases and not Hawala money.”

The amalgam said it had approached the court today and appealed for filing of an attempt to murder case against the police.

“We have a very well organized institute of Bait-ul-Maal through which we collect Ashra, Zakaat and other Islamic charities from people, and ordinary Kashmiris wholeheartedly donate money to our organization, which the police itself has admitted in newspapers. We don’t need Hawala money to fight legal cases of detainees,” the amalgam’s chairman, Syed Ali Shah Geelani said in a statement to.

While rejecting the police charges that Hawala money had been recovered from Bhat in 2008 too, Geelani said the amount “was actually recovered from some other person in 2008, but the police tried to link it to Ghulam Mohammad Bhat.  Even then it failed to prove any connection between the so-called Hawala money and Ghulam Mohammad Bhat before the court.”

Geelani also lashed out at police for subjecting Bhat to “third degree torture in custody”, terming it as a worst example of human rights violation and state terrorism.

Geelani said Bhat was in a “critical condition” in SKIMS, Soura after “he sustained injuries in the head due to police beating yesterday.”

“Now the police is trying to arrest Bhat from the hospital in the same condition, which is nothing less than a conspiracy to murder him It is the moral and legal duty of doctors to save his life,” he said.

Geelani also appealed people to observe strike and hoist black flags from 4 p.m, January 25 to January 26 evening. “Besides people should raise slogans of Go India Go and remind India that it has no right to celebrate its Rebuplic Day until the human and democratic rights of Kashmiris are not restored.”