According to the DGP’s version quoted by the JJC, the report on the minor detained in Pampore is not correct.

“This (news) report has been generated with the intention to malign the police and to create a story which may have an element of sensationalism,” the report says.

The report says that the DGP has denied The Quint’s story on detention of a minor in Baramulla and called it a “figment of imagination”.

This is what The Quint had reported on 26 August:

“Nights fill us with dread,” says Zainab* (name changed), a resident of Baramulla in north Kashmir. Zainab is in her late forties, and her children have grown up, but as many as three children have been “picked up” by security forces from her area, during raids conducted at night.

One of them, Qasim*, is about 10-11 years old, and stayed barely a few blocks away from Zainab.

“They (Qasim’s family) heard someone banging on their door a few days back. It was quite late. They (security personnel) told the family to call Qasim. They pleaded with the forces not to take the boy away but they roughed up the father and took Qasim under detention,” Zainab narrates.

This is one of the several instances of minors being detained by security forces in the Valley after the government decided to scrap Jammu and Kashmir’s special status on 5 August. The number of children detained is said to be running into hundreds.