Anxious, 70-year-old local barber first asks his other son Hilal to check. The screams grow louder and he decides to go out as well. Moments later, he is shot dead. The CRPF men opened fire at him, a few metres outside his house. His son, Yaqoob too was hit with bullets and is battling for life on a hospital bed.
"It was late afternoon on Sunday – around 5.30. I rushed out and saw two CRPF men beating my brother (Yaqoob), who was screaming for help. I started pleading with them to spare him," Hajam's son said.
Hilal says. "Two more CRPF men appeared. They saw my father approaching and shot him. He fell down. Then they shot at my brother as well. The two lay in a pool of blood''. He says he was pleading with them, when they opened fire at my father and brother.
The incident took place deep inside a narrow lane and the residents say the curfew restrictions had never before imposed inside this neighbourhood and the authorities had asked them not to venture out to the road.
The wall of the neighbour's house next to the narrow lane, where Ghulam Qadir Hajam was shot is still stained with blood. A few metres ahead, a bullet has carved a hole in the wall. Yaqoob's wife, Asmat sits nearby surrounded by a group of women, mourning the death.
She has not been able to go and nurse her injured husband Yaqoob, who is critical. “We didn't have curfew passes. So we requested the relative who accompanied him (Yaqoob) in the ambulance to stay with him,'' Asmat says.
The neighbourhood is seething with anger. “It was a cold blooded murder,'' says Hajam's neighbour, Mehraj-ud-din. “The CRPF men from the 172 battalion knew them (Hajam...
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