A day after PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter Iltija Mufti accused the Jammu and Kashmir police CID department of lying to the court, the J&K police issued a strong rebuttal to her allegations.
Iltija made these comments after she was issued a conditional passport for a period of two years. The passport issued to Iltija is country-specific and allows her to visit the UAE only to pursue her higher education.
The Jammu and Kashmir Police have dismissed Iljtija’s allegations as “completely false”. In a statement, the police said a quick internal audit was conducted following the allegation of pressure on the litigant and dismissed it as “completely false”.
Without naming Iltija in its response to her allegations, the police said on Friday that security verifications preceding the issue of passports are a high-value public service and the alertness of the force has detected as many as 54 young boys who were wrongly given passport services during 2017-18.
It is “unfortunate” that a public person has apparently projected her “personal grievance” as also being the grievance of the public in general in Kashmir, the police said.
A day after she was issued a “country-specific passport” for two years to allow her to study in the United Arab Emirates, Iltija asked on Friday, “Am I a terrorist or an anti-national?”
The 35-year-old had moved to the Jammu and Kashmir High Court in February after her application for a passport was not cleared following an adverse report by the J&K Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID). Her passport had expired on January 2 and she had applied for a fresh one on June 8 last year.
She asserted that she would continue to fight her case in court despite “pressure to withdraw her petition.”
In its statement, the police said, “On learning that accusations have been made that the CID of J&K Police has pressured a litigant to refrain from litigating in the High Court in connection with her passport-related grievances, a quick internal audit was carried out.”
“J&K Police can affirm that the claim of such pressure is completely false. Nevertheless, officers are being detailed to approach the aggrieved person and ascertain details about who pressurised them, when, where and under what circumstances so that the quick internal inquiry, if found inadequate, can be expanded to take suitable disciplinary action against the delinquent,” it said.
It said that the projection of her “personal grievance” as the grievance of the public in general in Kashmir was “very problematic.”
“J&K Police and its affiliates are public institutions and designed to serve the public interest. Denigrating the community’s own institutions for grievances that are personal on the basis of false accusations is self-harm,” the police said.