The J&K police on Thursday started the process of collecting DNA samples of the three families from Rajouri that claimed the three youths killed on July 18 this year in an encounter in Shopian were their kin and not militants.
A police team from Kashmir on Thursday afternoon met the three families in Rajouri. Later, a team of doctors collected DNA for matching them with the three slain militants, official sources said.
The three families had claimed that the militants resembled their kin after their pictures went viral online. They filed a missing persons report in Rajouri for three youth, identified as Abrar Ahmed Khan, 18, Imtiyaz Hussain, 26, and Abrar , 21.
“The police are trying to evaluate the case, by collecting all evidence including technical evidence. DNA samples of the three terrorists have been collected before their burial, which will be sent to the Central Forensic Laboratory (CFL) to ascertain the facts,” IGP Kumar said.
He said the police were looking at two aspects — matching the DNA samples and investigating whether the three “were in contact with local militants.”
Meanwhile, the families are demanding that the process of returning the bodies be speeded up. “My son went to Kashmir in June to make some money and pay his school fee. My only request is to hand the body to us. There should be justice,” Sabr Hussian, father of Imtiyaz, a Class 12 student, said.
The father of missing Abrar, in an online video appeal, said his son was carrying his Aadhar card too. “The police should check the room where they were staying. I have one question: how could they open any fire when they were unarmed?”
However, the police, in a press release on July 18, said all the three killed remain unidentified and they were buried far away near a hill in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district.
