A love story ‘murdered’ in Srinagar
— Times of India reports: “Rajneesh was a small trader from Jammu often going on business trips to Srinagar. He fell in love with a girl and married her.”
— “He wanted to be faithful to his beloved from Srinagar, who was beautiful and had unflinching trust in her life partner. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to have love bloom between Jammu and Srinagar. But it was more than that. The boy from Jammu was a Hindu and the girl from Srinagar, a Muslim. Ameena was her name and she changed her name to Anchal Sharma after marriage.”
— “A month after the marriage the boy was picked up from his Jammu house by the Kashmir police and taken to Srinagar for ‘investigation.’ The police never registered his name, Rajneesh Sharma, as the accused who is being taken to Srinagar, but instead named his brother Pawan Sharma in police records, to confuse and hide the real identity.”
— “The smell of a plot was there the moment they took the boy hustled in a jeep and covered with a blanket.”
— “The boy never returned home to celebrate his first Diwali with Anchal nee Ameena.”
— “He was found dead hanging with an iron grill in his Srinagar cell. Police said he committed ‘suicide.’ An inconsolable Anchal alleged that her parents bribed police to murder her beloved because he dared to marry a Muslim girl from the valley. Anchal’s father works in Srinagar’s police department, hence the influence was obvious.”
— “This week Anchal would have been celebrating Diwali with her husband Rajneesh but for if this ultimate Taliban act. Surprisingly the incident, so brutal and tragic hasn’t found an echo in the elite human-rightist circles of Delhi and the self-righteous media which had taken up the Rizwan case of Kolkata at a greater war footing than it has shown regarding Chinese incursions.”
— “Rajneesh’s ‘murder’ in a police post in Srinagar wouldn’t have occurred if Rajneesh was a ‘Rizwan’ and the girl had remained an Ameena.”
— “The writerati, who declare love’s supremacy whenever the boy is someone else and the girl is a Hindu (the final test one has to pass to be declared secular in this land of self-flagellation) are maintaining a studied silence. None has spoken so far. None has tried to invoke the wrath of the Women’s Commission, none has bothered to take a delegation of women to Jammu in the name of secularism and its prophets. And none has found it a deserving case for a heated debate on the sparkling channels discussing who should win — love or the colour of your faith?”
— “Why?”
— “Because the girl was a Muslim turned Hindu and the boy, unfortunately happened to be  Hindu. Because the culprit in this case is Srinagar, the reservoir of all that is sacred in secular pantheon and the boy belongs to the Hindu Jammu and hence anything that would demand a condemnation of the Taliban in Srinagar must be held back and forgotten?”
— “The girl, Anchal nee Ameena, said sobbingly in Jammu that the Srinagar police tortured her husband just for his crime of marrying a Muslim girl. The mother of the girl knew about the affair but insisted the boy convert to Islam, which Rajneesh refused. Anchal says Rajneesh was tortured in the police custody putting pressure on him to convert and when he refused consistently, he was murdered. The Jammu papers have reported quoting the postmortem report that police tortured the boy in custody, broke his legs, crushed his knee, gave him electric shocks and peeled his nails before declaring his ‘suicide.’ In cold blood.”