Sister of Truck Driver Killed in J&K’s Baramulla
On Thursday morning, a pall of gloom descended on the Goripora area of Sopore, some 55 kilometers north of Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir.
At a one-story house, Nisara Begum is being consoled by wailing women — not an uncommon site in Kashmir. She mourned, “Saani Kasheer korukh Karbala (They have turned our Kashmir into Karbala).”
At around 3 am on 6 February, the silence of the cold night was broken by a phone call at the house of Waseem Ahmad Mir in Goripora. A truck driver by profession, 32-year-old Waseem had left his home at around 10 pm on 5 February, to deliver a truckload of apples to Kolkata, West Bengal. But his usual journey was terminated close to home.
Waseem was allegedly shot dead by Army personnel in north Kashmir’s Baramulla after it allegedly failed to stop at a checkpoint. In a statement issued by the army’s Chinar Corps on 6 February, the army claimed that “shots were fired aiming on tyres to deflate which forced vehicle to halt…Consequent to detailed search, the injured driver was immediately evacuated to GMC Baramulla by Security Forces where he was declared dead.”
“Incidents like these risk alienating the very people who we need to carry with us on the road to complete normalcy,” Omar Abdullah, Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, wrote on X, following the incident.
