Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 27: Calling for collective and meaningful efforts to contain the spread of deadly COVID-19, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) urged administration to take immediate measures to check alleged excesses by police and para-military personnel while enforcing lockdown across the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
PDP spokesperson and former legislator Firdous Tak in a statement said that mainstream and social media platform were flooded with images of people being paraded and humiliated and their videos and pictures being circulated by police and paramilitary personnel enforcing lockdown. In various parts of Jammu and Kashmir, especially Kashmir, Government employees engaged in essential services, including doctors, were also allegedly harassed and beaten up, he added.
“The behavior difference between lawbreakers and enforcers must be visible and the two cannot act in the same manner”, he said adding that nothing permits a police personnel to take the law into his own hand and resort to inhuman and shameful methodology. “It is unfortunate that in Jammu and Kashmir things always are being enforced with an iron fist. While the officials out there enforcing lockdown and preventing spread of disease are doing a commendable job and work under tremendous pressures, hundreds and thousands of people sitting home are also passing through unprecedented situation”.
Tak said that a humane approach was need of the hour where the society and law enforcement agencies have to play a collective and shared role in saving human lives. He also urged the people to cooperate and follow all the guidelines being issued by the administration from time to time in order to prevent the spread of deadly disease in the community.
“The social, economic and public health consequences of this near-total meltdown of normal life schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself”, he said adding that in those circumstances the society will have to play a more crucial role.
He urged the party workers across Jammu and Kashmir to play a role of educator and catalyst in order to spread the message of social distancing.
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