Sopore: The Jammu and Kashmir police Friday said that it has arrested three Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Panchs who impersonated themselves as militants to extort money from a fruit merchant on gunpoint while one of their associate is still on run.
A police spokesman in a statement issued to news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), said that on a complaint received by Mudasir Ahmad Shiekh from Hamdani Colony Nadihal that during the intervening night of 3/4 April 2021 some unidentified persons barged into the in-law’s house at Nadihal along with weapons and asked them to drop at the South Kashmir and also took away two mobile phones and threatened not to disclose to anyone.
He said that in this regard FIR no 20 u/s 450, 506 IPC, and 7/25 arms act was lodged at PS Panzalla, and an investigation was taken up.
The spokesman said that during the investigation on technical evidence one panch namely Mehraj u din Rather s/o Haji Mohd Akbar Rather r/o Minipora Krankshoon Sopore (BJP) was called up for questioning and he confessed the commission of a crime with three more persons namely Mohd Saleem Wani s/o GH Rasool Wani r/o Hardpora Achabal Anantnag (Sarpanch), Bashir Ahmad Lone s/o Mohd Shahbhan Lone r/o Nadihal and Mohd Dilawar Khwaja s/o Sonnaulla Khwaja r/o Dachinpora Ruhama.
The spokesperson said Mohd Saleem from Anantnag who is a sarpanch of BJP still at large.
He said that it transpired that Mehraj and Salim had planned to extort money from Lone Traders illegally. Mehraj had contacted Bashir, who further contacted Dilawar for obtaining some fake weapons for committing the crime.
“These have also been recovered during the investigation, and further efforts are underway to unearth more links,” the spokesman said—(KNO)
