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Srinagar, Dec 28: People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), rejected police claims as “concocted cover up story” and reiterated demand for “credible judicial probe” into the controversial Hyderpora encounter.

“Today’s press briefing of J&K police about last month’s Hyderpora tragic incident is only a repetition of old story. It does not even, slightly give any objective picture of this shocking incident,” PAGD’s spokesperson M Y Tarigami said in a statement issued here to GNS.

“There is a strong public perception that the civilians killed in the incident were made human shields by the security forces and the latest statement of the police seems to be a concocted cover up story,” he said, adding, “It will not suffice the legitimate concerns of the people at large and family of the slain victims.”

The PAGD is alliance comprising the National Conference (NC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), CPI(M), Awami National Conference and the Peoples Movement. It seeks the restoration of the special status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir which was revoked by the Centre in August 2019.

“PAGD firmly believes that nothing short of a credible judicial probe will clear the doubts,” Tarigami said, adding, “The administration must, without any further delay, order a time bound judicial probe.”

Police had claimed that a Pakistani militant Hyder Bhai, his associate Aamir Ahmad Magray of Ramban, ‘OGW’ Dr Mudasir Gul and building owner Altaf Ahmed Bhat were killed in the encounter in Hyderpora.

However families of three of them— Dr Mudasir Gul, Altaf Ahmad Bhat, and Amir from Ramban—contested police claim that they were associated with militancy.

Later the bodies of two Srinagar residents – businessman Muhammad Altaf Bhat and Dr Mudasir Gul – were later exhumed from a graveyard in a remote village in the Handwara area of north Kashmir where “four” persons were buried quietly by the police and handed over to their families following widespread outrage and sit-in protest held by the grieving families in Srinagar.

In between, three days after the controversial encounter, the government ordered magisterial inquiry by additional district magistrate to be completed within 15 days. gns