Mehbooba and Mehdi's dangerous rhetoric against army & security forces in the aftermath of Pahalgam

Time of India

06-05-2025

Mudasir Dar is a social and peace activist based in South Kashmir. He is a Rashtrapati Award recipient in world scouting and has contributed to many local and national publications on a diverse range of topics, including national security, politics, governance, peace, and conflict. LESS ... MORE
In Kashmir, conflict is not merely fought with guns; it is waged with words, selectively deployed to shift culpability and obscure truth. The recent statements by former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti and Srinagar MP Ruhullah Mehdi in connection with the death of 23-year-old Imtiaz Ahmad Magray in Kulgam reflect this enduring trend—a calculated deployment of grief as political capital and a deliberate distortion of facts at the cost of national security, institutional integrity, and public peace.
According to credible reports and video documentation, Magray was not a victim of state atrocity as claimed, but a confessed terror associate who led security forces to two hideouts known to host Pakistani terrorists. During a supervised and videographed operation, he leapt into the Vishaw River—an act captured on camera, not conjured through conjecture. Yet, without awaiting postmortem reports or magisterial inquiry, senior political figures took to social media and public platforms to declare this an extrajudicial killing, spinning a narrative of Army brutality that collapsed under the weight of evidence within hours.
It is not just one factual occurrence that is a matter here but rather, the form in which truth has been systematically distorted. Such wild claims are not outliers in a post-truth world where reality has no place, and perception is everything. It is an indication of an underlying mental illness. The purposeful political cleansing of terror-appearing individuals alongside the systematic blurring of counterterrorism as oppression, aid, and victimhood as martyrdom of the state and a peaceful nation's adversaries turns peacemakers.
Yet, Ruhullah Mehdi, the sitting MP from Srinagar, issued an official press statement on May 4th, declaring: 'Imtiyaz was picked up by the Security Forces days ago, and today, he was returned to his family lifeless… Arbitrary detentions, custodial killings, and torture are violations of every democratic and legal principle.'
He further suggested that this incident is reflective of a broader pattern of abuse and equated counterterrorism with collective punishment—a charge commonly levied by Pakistan-sponsored propagandists.
Mehbooba Mufti, former chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir, doubled down on the narrative through social media, asserting:
'Post the Pahalgam attack, reports of arbitrary detentions, alleged custodial torture & harassment of locals are pouring in from across South Kashmir. Imtiyaz's body was recovered from a stream in Kulgam. His family alleges he was taken by forces two days ago. Demands accountability'.
This framing—deliberate and highly emotive—suggests institutional impunity without evidence, and positions Magray as a civilian victim rather than a terror associate caught within the operational complexities of an active conflict zone.
What Mehbooba and Mehdi have done is not mere political commentary. It is the conscious insertion of unverified narrative into a volatile environment, drawing dangerous equivalence between the Indian security apparatus and foreign-backed militant violence. This whitewashes terrorism, blurs the line between the guilty and the innocent, and feeds directly into the ecosystem of insurgent propaganda.
This is hardly the first such narrative trap. After the Hyderpora incident and many others as well and the most notorious outrage, the killing of Burhan Wani started glorifying him posthumously, resulting in one of the most violent outbreaks the world has seen in recent years. Political capturing of all the wars to extract sympathy exploited Pakistan funded separatist ecosystems using survivors' fury to and opening of a floodgate of violence was enabled because in every single case, the distortion of facts.
The reason for the latest disinformation campaign is equally perplexing. It follows closely on the heels of the Pahalgam terror attack by foreign funded Pakistani terrorists who indiscriminately shot helpless tourists. This barbarism on innocent civilians was intended to escalate the sheer violence and terrorism in the region. Amidst such chaos there is usually a semblance of political unity irrespective of party lines. However, in this case, there is no complete unity showcasing instead deep engineered fragmentation of focus away from violence to governance.
This change in narrative, completely fabricated as it might be, is not simply irresponsible. In fact, this could spell disaster. During such times of globalization, where global discourse can be transported to different places in an instant, misinformation of such magnitude carries a distinct type of psychological impact. It validates militants across the border, backs TRF sponsored terrorism, and identifies India as the other democracy in the world which is bearing the gob of democracy devoid of any international regard, especially in alarming situations were reputation dictates international collaboration on sensitive issues.
This misinformation is not simply reckless; rather, it is a strikingly harmful tactic. In this over-texted world where stories spread within minutes, any politically motivated misinformation is nothing short of propaganda. It galvanizes aggressive forces beyond the border, serves to strengthen the narratives of terrorist proxies like The Resistance Front (TRF), and whittles away Indian democracy's international credibility, which is already strained in contexts where diplomacy constitutes perception management.
More dangerously, it corrodes public trust in institutions that are already operating under immense pressure. The Army, paramilitary forces, and intelligence agencies operating in Kashmir are engaged in one of the world's most complex counterinsurgency efforts. Their success depends not just on firepower, but on legitimacy. When mainstream political leaders begin to echo the language of radical proxies—whether wittingly or out of desperation—they contribute to the very insurgency they claim to oppose.
Hence, Mehbooba Mufti and Ruhullah are equally guilty, not just synonymously morally but legally too. There is a gap of just a few words between the two leaders. Under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) law, someone is prosecutable for telling lies that threaten public peace or disrupt counter-terror activities. Speech that is free is not compensated with the right to create martyrdom or in this case manufactured martyrdom. A person sitting at a prominent political seat who uses acts of violence with the view to harm the state of a region suffering indicative pain does not soothe the state.
This is ultimately, and quite simply, a truth about a deficit of political legitimacy. With the traditional support bases, which is a specific area or group that a politician will often use to gain votes from, there are many leaders who get cut off the modern narratives. Certain leaders turn to moralization of indifference or the true lies inversion. Self-victimization is the font where relevancy is needed however, collision between relevant and irrelevant goes. Irrespective of all demonic tactics utilized, these are not just destructive to peace, . But such tactics are deeply corrosive—not just to peace, but to the very idea of democratic politics in conflict zones.
Kashmir today stands at an inflection point. After years of bloodshed, there was finally a semblance of normalcy before this Pahalgam Attack .Youth were returning to classrooms, not training camps. Tourism was reviving. Elections, once boycotted, were now celebrated as participatory milestones. But all of this progress remains fragile. It can be undone not just by bullets, but by words—as was seen in the Pahalgam attack ,how some statements of the political leaders manufactered this bloodshed ,words that delegitimised the state, that gave cover to terror, and that turned the battle for peace into a battlefield of perception.
Let us be clear: to question the state is democratic. To mislead the public is not. To mourn a death is human. To manufacture martyrdom is not. And to stand for human rights is noble—but only if one also condemns the killers of humans, not just the keepers of order. It is time we stop letting terrorists write our headlines, and stop allowing political opportunists to become their editors.
Let the facts breathe. Let the law function. And above all, let us not allow Kashmir to bleed again—not through gunfire, but through narrative betrayal.
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