Srinagar: In a significant judgment, Jammu and Kashmir’s rights panel yesterday asked the state government to set up a high-level inquiry commission to identify officials who failed to handle the Amarnath land row agitation in 2008, leaving 63 protesters dead.
It also directed payment of ex-gratia relief to the injured and the kin of those killed.
Disposing of a petition filed by the human rights wing of the moderate Hurriyat group, Javaid Kawoos, a member of the State Human Rights Commission, said in his judgment: “During the incidents which are under consideration, I am of the considered opinion that all the standard operating procedures were thrown to winds by the law enforcing agencies.
It asked the state government to form a probe panel to “identity the persons who by their omissions and commissions, express or tacit, lapsed and erred in their discharge of official functions”.
Sixty-three people died in clashes between protesters and security forces when protests rocked the Valley over the state government’s allotment of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board. The allotment was later cancelled.
IANS
