Srinagar, Dec 14 : Former station house officer was cross examined in connection with fake encounter killing of Abdul Rehman Padroo before a court on Monday.
The SHO, Muhammad Asgar Bhat, who was the investigating officer of the case, was partly cross examined and the cases will continue tomorrow as well.
The SIT had probed the killing of Padroo, a carpenter from Larnoo Kokernag who was passed off as Lashkar militant and killed in a fake encounter after he went missing from Batamaloo in December 2006. Seven accused include former SSP Hans Raj Parihar are under detention at Central Jail Srinagar.
The SIT was headed by SSP Uttam Chand who has already recorded his statement before the court in November 2013 that the fake encounter case was ‘rarest of the rare’ cases and prayed for death sentence to all the seven accused.
Besides Parihar, the SIT had found Dy SP Bahadur Ram, ASI Farooq Gudoo, driver Farooq Ahmad Padder, Manzoor Ahmad Malik and Constable Bansi Lal guilty of killing Padroo.
The SIT had exhumed Padroo’s body in Sumbal area of Bandipora district. Padroo had gone missing from Batamaloo bus stand on December 8, 2006 and taken to Waskoora in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district where he was killed in the fake encounter by the accused, working with Special Operation Group (SOG) posted in Ganderbal and Sumbal camps.
The DNA taken from the body of Padroo matched with that of his relatives in Larnoo Kokernag, confirming that the killed ‘foreign militant’ was not a Pakistani militant but the abducted carpenter. (GNS)