The bodies of two businessmen killed in Jammu and Kashmir’s Srinagar were exhumed on Thursday, Greater Kashmir reported. Their bodies were buried at a graveyard in Kupwara district’s Handwara town.
An unidentified official told Global News Service that the bodies were exhumed under the supervision of Handwara tehsildar and doctors. The bodies will be sent to Srinagar and handed over to the families.
Hardware shop owner Mohammad Altaf Bhat and dentist-turned-entrepreneur Dr Mudasir Gul were killed in a gunfight during an operation carried out by security forces on Monday at a commercial complex in Srinagar’s Hyderpora.
The police had first claimed that Bhat and Gul were shot dead by militants, but later said they might have died in a crossfire during the anti-militancy operation.
The families of the two men killed in the gunfight have been demanding that their bodies should be handed over to them. Some of the protesting family members were detained during a demonstration on Wednesday and released on Thursday morning.
Bhat’s niece has alleged that he was murdered by the police.
“He was used as a human shield in a staged encounter,” Saima Bhat had told The Kashmir Walla. “He runs a hardware shop and owns the complex where the forces had come for checking. There was no gunfight in that complex. He was taken three times as a human shield for checking and when they couldn’t find anything, he was killed there.”
The Jammu and Kashmir administration on Thursday ordered a magisterial inquiry into the gunfight in Srinagar in which Bhat and Gul were killed.
Srinagar Additional District Magistrate Khurshid Ahmad Shah will investigate the Hyderpora gunfight. Shah has issued a notice urging people to give information on the gunfight.
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