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Updated: Jan 06, 2019 23:34 IST

A militant commander on Sunday dismissed ex-Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti’s visits to families of militants as a pre-election “drama”. “…Mufti goes to homes of militants and expresses sympathies with them and claims that police are getting directions from somewhere to harass their families. When she was in power… family members of militants were harassed. Who was giving directions to police then?’’ Hizbul Mujahideen’s operational commander, Riyaz Naikoo, purportedly said in an audio clip.

Naikoo said militants and civilians were also killed when Mufti was in power. He added Mufti’s statements then were aimed at appeasing her erstwhile alliance partner, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and Delhi. “Now elections are near… that is the reason why she is expressing sympathies with the people,’’ he said, referring to the assembly elections that have to be held within six months after the imposition of the president’s rule in Jammu and Kashmir in November. “Whenever she visits them, she should be humiliated and asked to go back. She has sympathies with India and not with us.”

Mufti, who lost power in June after the BJP pulled out of her coalition government, on Thursday visited a slain militant’s family in South Kashmir’s Shopian and asked security forces not to harass relatives of militants. She urged authorities to release the militant’s brother, who has been under police detention since last month.

Mufti, who regularly visited the kin of people killed in violence in Kashmir after she left the Congress and formed her party in the late 1990s, claimed to have directed security forces against harassing families of militants while fighting militancy when she was in power. She had earlier on December 30 met a militant’s sister after her alleged detention and custodial torture.

The visits have comes as Mufti’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is planning a mass contact programme ahead of the assembly elections following a series of defections from the party.