Srinagar: Police have taken custody of two detainees from Srinagar’s Central Jail after their names surfaced in the assassination of advocate Babar Qadri.
Sources said that police have taken the custody of two detainees from the Central Jail Srinagar in connection with Babar Qadri assassination case (FIR no. 62/2020 u/s 302 IPC, 7/27 Arms Act and 16/18 UAPA) registered in Police Station Lal Bazar in Srinagar on September 24, 2020.
The arrested duo has been identified as Muneer Aziz War alias Qari, son of Abdul Aziz War of Hatmulla Kupwara, and Tawseef Ahmed Shah, son of Ghulam Mohammad Shah of Parimpora, Srinagar. Both of them were under detention at Central Jail.
Police sources said during the investigation in the Qadri’s assassination, three other accused — Shahid Shafi Mir of Khanyar, Zahid Farooq Khan of Nowhatta and Asif Bhat of Rehmania Colony, Srinagar – had named War and Shah also as being involved.
They said that Mir, Khan and Bhat while making the statement before the Special Investigation Team (SIT) said that they had received directions from War and Shah for the killing of Qadri.
Taking taken over their custody from the jail authorities, police are now ascertaining their complicity in Qadri’s assassination.
Pertinently, on September 24, gunmen had fired upon Qadri around 6:25 pm from a point-blank range at his Hawal residence, killing him on the spot.
Qadri, a had been practising law in Jammu and Kashmir for more than a decade and was a regular to TV debates as a panelist. His social media posts often generated controversies. In his last Facebook video, Qadri had accused the Bar Association lawyers of planning to kill him.
Qadri had also accused a senior Bar leader of using militants and Pakistani agencies to stifle opposition within the Bar and turning it into an extension of Geelani’s Hurriyat faction.
He had also criticized some senior lawyers of sending their children to the US and other foreign countries to study while provoking the children of the common citizens to pick up guns and stones.
