Join the separatists, Kashmir cop tells IAS officer after Facebook spat

SRINAGAR: An IAS officer and a senior police officer from Jammu and Kashmir engaged in a war of words on Facebook over the latest phase of violence in the Kashmir

SRINAGAR: An IAS officer and a senior police officer from Jammu and Kashmir engaged in a war of words on Facebook over the latest phase of violence in the Kashmir Valley where over 50 people have been killed in action by security forces.

HT Image

Ruveda Salam, who became Kashmir’s first woman Indian Police Service (IPS) officer in 2013 before appearing for the civil services examination again in 2015 to qualify for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), obliquely criticised the current Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) dispensation in Kashmir.

“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!” she wrote on her Facebook page on August 3.

Salam’s post came a day after the body of 21-year-old Reyaz Ahmad Shah was found in Srinagar’s old city with hundreds of pellets in his body.

In the comment’s section, Sopore superintendent of police Harmeet Singh Mehta asked Salam to “resign and join some separatist group” and even called her an “ignorant lady”.

His comments led to series of exchanges where Salam, who now works with the Union ministry of finance, accused Mehta of “gender bias” and name calling that “all Kashmiris are terrorists”.