Senior Congress leader speaks against killing of Burhan Wani

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Saifuddin Soz on Friday sparked a controversy by claiming that if he was authorised, he would have never ordered to kill Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani.

He believes that it would have been better to have a dialogue with Burhan instead of killing.

"Mere bas mein hota toh Burhan Wani ko zinda rakhta aur unse baat-cheet karta," the Congress MP said.

It may be recalled that Burhan Wani, once regarded as the top Hizbul commander in the Kashmir Valley, was knocked down by the security forces on July 8, 2016. His killing triggered a massive outrage in the Valley as people restored to violent protests, in which more than 100 people lost their lives and many got severely injured.

At that time, Soz had appealed to the government to roll back the ‘draconian’ AFSPA law from the Valley and start a dialogue with ‘opinion leaders’ in Kashmir.

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Retaliating to Soz's latest remark, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said that the terrorists should always be treated as terrorists.

“The government has to ensure peace, it is our aim to destroy them (terrorists),” MoS Home Hansraj Ahir said. Jammu Kashmir Deputy CM Nirmal Singh asked, "People who call terrorists leaders, do they want to glorify them? Terrorists will always be treated like terrorists."

Earlier in May this year, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said, “We have come up with a permanent solution to solve Kashmir. The initiative has begun. We are moving forward.”

He, however, had not explained what kind of solution government had found. On being further questioned on whether the solution was “political in nature”, Rajnath Singh said, “It is too early to discuss it in public. I don’t want to discuss it with the media.”