The Supreme Court will on Friday hear a petition filed by a lawyer against the alleged harassment of Kashmiris in parts of the country in the wake of the Pulwama attack.
A Jaish-e-Mohammed suicide bomber killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district on February 14. Several Kashmiri students were reportedly harassed and beaten up in the Dehradun over the weekend. Since then, many Kashmiri students in Uttarakhand have temporarily left the state. Nearly 300 Kashmiri students have fled to Jammu and Delhi from colleges in Uttarakhand after large-scale eviction from their campuses.
Advocate Tariq Adeeb filed the plea in the Supreme Court, Bar and Bench reported on Thursday. The petition has arraigned eight states and the Union government as respondents. The respondent states are Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Meghalaya, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal.
The petition provided details of the alleged attacks on Kashmiris living in different parts of the country. Adeeb has asked the Supreme Court to issue directions to heads of educational institutions, to take steps to protect the lives of Kashmiris. The lawyer also wants people indulging in hate speech to be prosecuted.
Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves told the court on Thursday that the plea needs to be heard urgently because it relates to the safety of students, PTI reported. A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices LN Rao and Sanjiv Khanna took note of Gonsalves’ submission, but refused to list the plea for hearing on Thursday. However, the bench agreed to hear it on Friday.
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