Militant-Friendly Kashmir Cop Who Decamped With Seven AK-47 Rifles From MLA’s House Was A Stone-Pelting ‘Rage-Boy’

A Special Police Officer (SPO), Adil Bashir, who decamped with seven AK-47 rifles and a pistol belonging to security guards of a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) legislator, Wachi Aijaz Ahmad Mir, was a stone-pelter before joining the police force in 2017 and was maintaining links with terrorists, Deccan Herald has reported.

Adil was earlier charged with the crime of stone-throwing in 2014 and he was named as part of the FIR that was submitted to court.

Last Friday, Adil, who hails from Shopian, vanished with with seven AK-47 rifles and a licensed pistol of the PDP MLA from his Jawahar Nagar residence. A security alert has been sounded across Kashmir. The state police announced Rs 2 lakh reward for anyone giving credible information on the whereabouts of the SPO.

The PDP legislator was away in Delhi for the last two weeks and his eight security guards took a vacation after depositing their weapons for safe custody at the residence of the MLA in Jawahar Nagar.

According to police sources, Adil, who returned from the native village, wrapped the weapons in a dustbin, took it to a nearby lane and handed them over to militants who were waiting in a car. When one of the security guards arrived at the MLA’s residence, he found boxes in which weapons were kept open with rifles missing. He filed a compliant in the local police station about the incident.

As per standard operating procedure currently in place, an occasional background verification of the policemen deployed as guards of politicians and influential persons is performed by the state police’s intelligence wing. In Adil’s case, though, police learnt about his “negative” antecedents only after he ran away with a tranche of weapons from the MLA’s house

The Kashmir Reader quoted a senior police officer as saying that “Adil was drawn from the (Shopian) district police unit for doing menial chores at the legislator’s home. The senior officer also added that Adil was chosen because he and the legislator both belonged to Shopian’s Zainpora.
If that wasn’t the reason, the police officer said, it is “unbelievable” that a policeman with charges as “serious” as stone-throwing could have gotten such a posting.