Jammu and Kashmir Awami National Conference demands repeal of Afpsa

In the wake of the killing of a teenager allegedly by a BSF constable, Jammu and Kashmir Awami National Conference today asked prime minister Manmohan Singh to ensure zero tolerance for violation of human rights by security forces and set up fast track courts for speedy justice.

The JKANC also demanded the repeal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFPSA), which confers some special powers to the security forces, from Jammu and Kashmir.

Terming Kashmir "a place of living dead", JKANC president Khalida Shah alleged that the state as well as the Centre were not trying hard to deliver justice to the people of the state.

"No one is trying hard to get us justice and whatever is happening is due to the notorious AFSPA. Just in a matter of a month, nine innocent people have been killed in the valley itself," she alleged while talking to reporters here.

Shah also asked the prime minister to put his policy of zero tolerance in use and bring the violators of human rights and civil liberties of the people of Kashmir, against whom cases are registered since 1989.

Expressing disapproval over the CBI report on the Shopian case which ruled out rape and murder of two women, she said, "there is no doubt that it was a murder... in this case we do not trust the CBI report."

"Army as a matter of fact is for the protection of people but in our state, it performs an exactly opposite role," Shah, the president of JKANC which was founded by her husband and late chief minister JM Shah, alleged.