KV Correspondent

Slain man’s family alleges foul play

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Srinagar: The family of the man, Ghulam Mohiuddin Bhat (60), who died last week after fighting injuries he sustained in the Jehangir Chowk grenade blast on September 7, last month have alleged that Bhat had suffered grievous injuries as he was ‘ruthlessly’ beaten by forces after the grenade blast which had left his injured.

Bhat who had worked for 35 years as the hospital security person and was at the end of his career posted at SKIMS, where he was working as security supervisor. He retired from his job on July 31, but least did he know that he would be battling for his life at the hospital where he worked in the past. 

Bhat, a resident of Bughama, Batpora of district Budgam is survived with two sons, who are unmarried and two daughters who have been married off during his lifetime.

Bhat’s younger son, Muhammad Younis Bhat, a teacher by profession said that in his father he has lost his role model, who taught him how to face the life whenever it gets tougher, “death is inevitable, but I was not ready for this, I still can’t believe that he is not around,” he said.

According to the family, Younis received a call on the evening of September 7 from his father’s number. The caller was not his father, but was someone else, “he told me to come to SMHS, I insisted, saying what had happened, but he kept on saying that you just come to the hospital,” Younis said, adding that the person did not let his father to speak to him.

“He hung up, and I called back, this time my father picked up the phone and he seemed frightened, he was really not in his senses,” he said, after that the family rushed to the hospital.

According to the family several eye witnesses told them that Bhat was thrashed after he fell down from his newly bought scooty post explosion, “when he called, he kept on saying ‘please save me, they will kill me. I am in some dark place, they will kill me,” the family said, adding that his words and the eye witness account really do suggest something else.

Younis, however said that there were no torture marks on his father’s body, but he seemed to be frightened, “even when my uncle reached to SHMS, he (Bhat) was so much in delusion that he even did not recognize his brother.”

A splinter had injured his portion of head which according to the family took a toll on him and did not let him live further. Later, the right side of his body was rendered paralyzed completely.

“After admitting him in the Surgical Intensive Care unit, he after some days recovered to some extent, and we were happy, but our happiness was short lived,” Younis said.

As per Bhat’s son, he was out to visit some of his relatives on September 7 and was out to get his pension papers processed at Accountant General (AG) office near Civil Secretariat, “on that fateful day, he said that he will go out and process his paper at AGs office, and will also get all the papers of his newly purchased scooty from a dealer in Srinagar,” but nothing returned home that evening.

“We should not have let him go out that very day. If I knew that he won’t come back home in the evening, I would not have let him go out,” he said while he broke into tears, sobbing, however, accepting what fate had in store for his father and for the family that has been left mourning.

Younis, however, has got a regret which according to him will keep haunting and hurting him for the entire life, “he has served the department for 35 long years, but at the end he was traumatized, I don’t know who did it, but he was traumatized, he was in pain,” Younis said. “Those words he uttered when he first called me are hauntingly dark, still echoing around,” he added.


KV Correspondent

Kashmir Correspondent cover all daily updates for the newspaper

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