Srinagar:  Upping the ante against PDP president Mehbooba Mufti for welcoming disciplinary action against Major Leetul Gogoi, senior National Conference (NC) leader Tanvir Sadiq said it was Mehbooba-led government that ridiculed the recommendations of the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) in the human shield case, involving the Army officer.

”For those who have forgotten-Let me remind you that Ms Mufti’s government ridiculed the recommendations of the State Human Rights’ Commission and questioned the violation of Farooq Dar’s rights despite concrete proof that he was a voter who was used as a human shield by Major Gogoi,” Mr Sadiq wrote on micro-blogging site twitter.

He was responding to a tweet by Ms Mufti, which read, ”Army initiating disciplinary action against Major Gogoi is a welcome step. Only hope that unlike Pathribal and Machil fake encounters, it is taken to its logical conclusion.”

The tweet by Ms Sadiq was later re-tweeted by NC Vice President and former chief minister Omar Abdullah.

The Army has ordered disciplinary action against Major Gogoi, who was detained by the police in the summer capital, Srinagar, after a row in a hotel involving a Kashmiri woman. An Army court of inquiry has held Major Gogoi guilty of “fraternising with a local in spite of instructions to the contrary and being away from the place of duty while in operational area.”

The Army officer was detained on May 23 after a fight with the staff of a Srinagar hotel where he was allegedly trying to check in with an 18-year-old woman.

Major Gogoi hit headlines in April 2017 when he used a local man, Farooq Ahmed Dar, as human shield to evade stone-pelting, drawing severe criticism from all sections of the society in Kashmir and rest of the country.

The SHRC had recommended a compensation of Rs 10 lakh to be paid to Dar for the incident. However, the government in Jammu and Kashmir had refused to pay Rs 10 lakh compensation.

The State’s Home Department in a communiqué to SHRC has informed that the government’s empowered committee has observed that the grounds on which compensation was recommended to human shield victim by the Commission cannot be accepted due to varied reasons.