Panch goes missing in South Kashmir

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, August 24

Amid a series of recent attacks on panchayat members, a panch from the Srinagar outskirts has gone missing from south Kashmir’s Shopian district.

Meanwhile, an unverified audio clip that has surfaced in social media claims that the missing panch has been killed and his body not returned due to the Covid pandemic.

The panch, Nissar Ahmad Bhat, of Khonmoh, according to his family, had gone to Shopian on August 19 and had been missing since then. The family had lodged a missing report in this regard.

“He travelled to Shopian where he had met some people and is missing since then,” a police official said, adding that “we are trying to trace the panch”.

As per the officer, Bhat, a former policeman who left his service, was booked under the Public Safety Act in 1995 and there were at least 12 FIRs registered against him.

“We are looking at all angles to trace him,” the officer said.

The audio clip, apparently released by a militant outfit on social media, claimed that the panch had been killed as there were complaints against him.

The clip claimed that they didn’t hand over the body to the family due to the Covid outbreak in a similar manner in which bodies of militants killed in gunfights were not returned to their families.

“The clip circulating seems fake,” the police officer said.

There have been a series of attacks on panchyat members and political workers in Kashmir this month. The attacks have forced the government to shift panchayat members to safe locations at tourist resorts of Pahalgam and Gulmarg.

Killed, claims audio clip

An unverified audio clip on social media claimed that the panch had been killed and his body not returned due to the Covid pandemic in a similar manner in which bodies of militants killed in gunfights were not returned to their families