PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday demanded sacking of Director General of J&K police RR Swain after he accused mainstream political parties of having cultivated leaders of terror networks for their political gains.

The DGP reportedly made these remarks while addressing students of the IIM here.

Infuriated by such remarks, Mehbooba, in context with the terror attack in which four Army soldiers were killed in Doda, told media-persons in Srinagar that “there is no accountability. By now the heads should have rolled. The DGP should have been sacked. Almost 50 soldiers have lost their lives in the last 32 months”.

She alleged that the current DGP is busy fixing things politically. His job is to break the PDP, harass people and journalists, and threaten people. Passport verification has been weaponized. They are finding ways to impose UAPA on maximum people. We don’t need a fixer here, we need a DGP. We have had DGPs from other states before and they have worked very well. No one has worked on communal lines like things are being done now”.

Mehbooba said “soldiers from all over the country come to Kashmir for their duty, but go back in coffins” while demanding fixing of responsibility at the highest level.

“Who is responsible for this if you say militancy has ended in the valley? In the last 32 months, especially since this DGP has been appointed, the maximum casualties have taken place. You people guard the borders. So whose responsibility is it to stop infiltration? Is it the responsibility of regional parties, myself and Omar Abdullah?

“Your narrative has been going on for 6 years, what did you achieve? You have suffered a major setback in North Kashmir where candidates of the mainstream parties lost the Lok Sabha election and the separatist voices came to the fore” she said.

J&K Peoples Conference President Sajad Gani Lone also strongly opposed the comments made by J&K Director General of Police (DGP), calling them “inappropriate and intolerable” in any functioning democracy.

In a post on X, Lone stated that “the comments made by the DG J&K Police pertaining to mainstream parties are inappropriate, to say the least.”

Lone criticized the DGP’s remarks, stating that even in a basic, rudimentary functioning democracy, such utterances by a serving police officer would not have been tolerated. “Such statements by serving officers are an indication of the disdain and contempt for anything remotely pertaining to democracy. Such a sad state of affairs and even sadder is the fact that the scriptwriters of this sad state of affairs take pride in having brought J&K to this level,” Lone added.

Congress leader GA Mir also criticised the remarks of the DGP and said all political parties that remained in power since 1996 have played a major role in bringing normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir.

Amid the row over DGP Swain’s remark, Mir said that peace that was restored during the UPA-1 and UPA-2 regimes has been shattered now during the BJP rule and that too in areas that had never seen terror incidents.