Following complaints that Kashmiri students are being harassed in various states particularly Delhi, the MHA has issued an advisory to all state governments and their police chiefs to ensure their protection. “The MHA has asked all the chief secretaries and DGPs to ensure safety of the Kashmiri youth studying in their respective states and identify a designated police officer in their state to whom any such complaint of harassment could be directly conveyed for ensuring timely action,” an official spokesman said in winter capital Jammu on Wednesday. He added that Governor’s office is following up this matter with the concerned authorities in Delhi. He said consequent to governor N.N. Vohra’s raising issue of students from Kashmir being unnecessarily harassed with the MHA, the Delhi police has nominated Taj Hasan, special commissioner of police (crime), and assigned him the responsibility of dealing with complaints faced by J&K students studying in Delhi.
Mr. Hasan’s telephone number is 011-23490211 (land line) and 23490346 (Fax). Email address of Special Commissioner/ Crime is splcp-crime-dl@nic.in . Special Helpline no is 1093 and 100, the spokesman said.
Harassment of Kashmiri students particularly after the recent incidents at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) by state and non-state actors in Delhi and elsewhere in the country has been widely resented in their home state with various political, social and student organisations asking the BJP government at the Centre and the state governments to ensure their safety and initiate action under law against those involved in alleged misdemeanour. Also, reports of Kashmiri businessmen being subjected to harassment by police in the wake of JNU incidents continue to pour in.
Former Chief Minister and working president of National Conference (NC), Omar Abdullah, recently while expressing resentment against ‘blanket stereotyping and maligning’ of Kashmiri students demand that the Government of India desists from ruining their careers for the benefit of political expediency”.
He said that harassment of Kashmiri students in Delhi was unacceptable and cautioned against making them “convenient scapegoats” in the JNU issue. Mr. Abdullah had also said, “There have been numerous instances in the past when the Delhi Police has cited ‘intelligence inputs’ to falsely implicate young Kashmiris only to be acquitted by the courts after years of incarceration. We express our resentment against this blanket stereotyping and maligning of Kashmiristudents and demand that the Government of India desists from ruining their careers for the benefit of political expediency”.
