After the famous outburst by Kashmiri IAS topper, Shah Faesal, on social media last month, another serving Kashmiri IAS officer has gone public with her criticism for the Mehbooba Mufti government.
And like last month month, this time too a public spat has erupted between the two top-ranking government officials over the goings on in Kashmir.
Shah, according to a report in Indian Express, worked as an ATM guard and was killed while while returning home after completing his duty in the old city. The local cops have registered a murder case against security force personnel.
Shah’s death, however, prompted Ruveda Salam, a civil servant in the Ministry of Finance to train her guns at the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti accusing her of “hypocrisy.”
Salam wrote on her Facebook page, “From wooing voters while wearing colour #green to painting #red the same valley streets, and then they question the credentials of the same religion whose symbols they used to mask their evil deeds. #hypocrisy couldn’t get worse than this!”
Salam, first woman IPS officer from Kashmir before she became an IAS officer, was condemned by SP Sopore, Harmeet Singh Mehta, who asked her to resign from her current administrative position and join the separatists.
Calling her an ignorant lady, Mehta wrote, “Government must take action against you as a civil servant spreading venom against the state. Better resign and join some separatist group.”
Salam reacted angrily to Mehta’s charges telling him not to teach her what should be done and not.
She said, “I weigh my each word and whatever I have written are facts. I am pained by the attitude of those who swear by oath to protect innocents and then shy away from assuming responsibility.
“I didn’t mind the “ignorant lady” comment by one of our worthy Police Officers of J&K, although it was in bad taste & with undertones of gender bias. Writing what you truly feel inside is often snubbed by dictating to you to resign & join separatists , probably , reflecting the general false belief that all Kashmiris are terrorists and they should be either silenced or driven away to the neighbouring country.”
This didn’t end here.
Mehta sarcastically asked Salam to talk to those people who were pelting stones and check their background. In her response, Salam replied asking who had reached out to the family of those killed and maimed.
“What did actually happen to the previous reports submitted after taking to people during peace times,” she said.
Faesal, in his Facebook post last month, too had asked, “When a state kills and maims its own citizens, it’s self injury and self-decimation of the worst sort.”
