Hriday Nath Wanchoo

Hriday Nath Wanchoo was a Kashmiri communist trade-unionist, who is remembered for ensuring the socioeconomic upliftment of sanitation workers of Jammu and Kashmir.

Career and politics

Wanchoo was employed as the Khilafarzi officer in Srinagar municipality.

Death

Wanchoo was assassinated by "unidentified gunmen" on 5 December 1992.

CBI Investigation

Within days, the state government roped in Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate the murder who concluded a local militant group called "Jamait-ul-Mujahidin" — comprising twelve terrorists — to have planned the assassination. However, by the time the investigation concluded, four of the accused had died and five had absconded, leaving only three — Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, who became chief of Jamiat ul Mujahideen; Mohammad Shafi Khan, a faculty member of the University of Kashmir specialising in Persian and active member of Jamiat ul mujahideen and close to Nasir ul Islam, than chief of jamiat ul mujahideen who was equally involved in the assasination; Ghulam Qadir Bhat, a constable with the Jammu and Kashmir Police who later joined Jamiat ul Mujahideen terror outfit — for trial under Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act before a special court in Jammu. Confessions were obtained from all of them.

Judiciary

In July 2001, the TADA Court acquitted Faktoo and others in light of procedural deficiencies in obtaining confessional statements and the absence of any other corroborative evidence. CBI appealed the judgement before the Supreme Court of India and in January 2003, S. N. Variava disagreed with the court's characterization of the confession, sentencing all to life-imprisonment.