In an embarrassment to the PDP-BJP government in Jammu and Kashmir, state's Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu's wife Roohi Nazki today asked the ruling combine to either stop the civilian killings in the Valley or step down.
"The powers that be need to either step up and stop the wrongdoings. Or they need to step down. I guess they just need to step down," Nazki wrote on Facebook.
A former employee of Tata Interactive Systems, Nazki termed the happenings in the Valley over the last 14 days "immoral, unethical, tragic and wrong".
"The brutal killings of children, the criminal blinding and maiming of protestors, and the shameless suffocating of an entire population is wrong.
"It is wrong even if it has been happening over the last two decades or so. It is wrong even if there are far too many agencies trying to keep Kashmir burning," she wrote.
In a democratic nation, a whole population is taken "hostage for days on end without basic amenities, phones, newspapers and all of it is happening under the watch of a popularly-elected government", she alleged.
"They need to step down so that we can be convinced that every popularly-elected government doesn't necessarily turn into an unresponsive monolith as soon as it is sworn into power.
"That each successive regime in Kashmir does not have to become undistinguishable from the previous one. That our leaders do not all have to transform into horrific, faceless and voiceless entities," said Nazki in scathing attack on the state government.
She said the stepping down of the government 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 cycle of waiting and watching. To have a conscience and keep it," she added.
Kashmir has been on the boil since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani by security forces in an encounter on July 8. The ensuing clashes between protestors and security forces have left 45 people dead so far.
