Retd J-K police officer shot dead while giving azaan

SRINAGAR: A 72-year-old retired police officer, who was the local “muezzin”, was shot dead by terrorists while he was giving the call for “azaan” from a mosque in Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla district on Sunday, police said.

Recalling the moments before Mohammad Shafi Mir was killed, his cousin Mohammad Mustafa, who was at home, said the call for the pre-dawn prayers was being given by a loudspeaker and suddenly it stopped. His last words were “reham (mercy)”, he said.

The “azaan” had stopped at “Ashhadu Anna Mohammadu Rasool-Allah (I bear witness that Mohammad is the messenger of Allah)”, he said.

Police said Mir retired as a senior superintendent of police in 2012. He was shot dead by terrorists inside the mosque in the Gantmulla locality of the north Kashmir’s Sheeri area early Sunday, they said.

“Terrorists fired upon Shri Mohd Shafi, a retired police officer, at Gantmulla, Sheeri Baramulla, while praying ‘azaan’ in the mosque and succumbed to injuries,” the Kashmir Zone Police said.

Mir had become the local “muezzi”-- a person who calls for prayers -- and he was devoted to his duties at the mosque, his family members said.

Following the incident, a large number of people gathered at Mir’s house and at the mosque complex. Mir is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.

Political parties condemned the killing and expressed their condolences to the former police officer’s family.

The National Conference (NC) said violence can never be tolerated in any form. Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti said innocent people have become “collateral damage to maintain the facade of normalcy touted” by the Centre.

The BJP said terror and terrorists have no religion.