SRINAGAR — Police in Kashmir have booked Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) founder Maqbool Bhat’s younger brother Zahoor Bhat for the attack on an Army convoy ahead of UPA chairperson and PM Manmohan Singh’s visit in June last year.
Bhat, a senior JKLF member, has been booked for murder and criminal conspiracy in the attack which had left eight Indian Army men dead and 12 more injured.
Police has accused the Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Toiba outfit for carrying out the attack on June 24 in Hyderpora on the outskirts of Srinagar city.
“Bhat has been taken on a judicial remand in the Hyderpora attack case and has also been booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA) vide detentions orders passed by District Magistrate, Budgam, against him on March 29 in the same case,” The Tribune reported.
A supplementary charge-sheet filed by police in the case blames Bhat for being ‘involved in hatching a criminal conspiracy with other terrorists … of being affiliated with the LeT’.
Bhat’s family has refuted the allegations and approached the high court. In her habeas corpus petition, Bhat’s aged mother submitted that her younger son Zahoor was never released since his arrest by the police in Kupwara in October 2013 and was thereafter booked twice under the PSA.
“In the supplementary chargesheet, it has been alleged that Zahoor was apprehended by the Budgam police at Humhama on the Airport Road on March 7,” The Tribune reported.