In a first clear sign of a growing resentment against the ruling Peoples' Democratic Party leadership, wife of a senior PDP leader and Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu today asked the Mehbooba Mufti government to “step down” because “the brutal killings of children, the criminal blinding and maiming of protesters and the shameless suffocating of an entire population is wrong”.
In a scathing facebook post, Drabu's wife Roohi Nazki, a former Tata executive, who recently returned to Srinagar to start an exquisite tea-house, Chai Jai on Jhelum banks, termed the government's response to the mass uprising across triggered by the killing of Kashmiri militant Burhan Wani as “immoral, unethical, tragic and wrong”.
The tea house was inaugurated by CM Mehbooba Mufti earlier this year. Though Nazki is a highly educated professional who regularly speaks her mind on issues of public interest in her individual capacity on social media, this facebook post, however, explicitly explains her intensity of resentment against the government's response to the protests in Kashmir valley within the families of the top PDP leaders. Nazki is also first cousin of top PDP ideologue and Education Minister Nayeem Akhtar, Revenue Minister Basharat Bukhari and Inspector General of Police Syed Javaid Mujtaba Gillani, who is heading the J&K Police in Kashmir valley.
“Their stepping down may not stop the injustice. But that is not all that matters. What matters more is for them to register a protest. To not become complicit by default. To break the silence and the cycle of waiting and watching. To have a conscience and keep it. To uphold truth if not justice”.
Nazki questioned the government, saying “..it is wrong, no matter what excuse we are fed, day in and day out”.
“And it is wrong in the most fundamental, most shameful and the most damning way. For it is the children of Kashmir that are being killed on street corners, by the security forces of our country. Who pump pellets into their young bodies. It is in a democratic nation that a whole population is taken hostage for days on end, without basic amenities, without phones, without newspapers. And it is happening under the watch of a popularly elected government. Yet again!”
Nazki termed the government's reaction “unacceptable” which “needs rectification”.
