J&K Min refutes charges of his PRO assaulting forest official

Jammu and Kashmir Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu today denied allegations that his PRO assaulted a Forest Department official and stopped him from removing encroachment from forest land in Pulwama district.
"There is no need to get hyper... There was no thrashing and no assault," Drabu told reporters here today.
He was replying to a question that while a forest official was thrashed by PRO Junaid Rashid the government slapped a case on a video journalist who was reporting the story.
"If there is any such case, I will take action. I have requested the Forest Minister to do an inquiry into this and see how it happened," Drabu said.

Forest Department official Mohammad Kabir alleged that Junaid assaulted him on November 28 when he, along with his staff members, went to remove encroachment from the forest land at Sangarwani Nichendajan at Rajpora in the district.
Drabu represents Rajpora constituency in the Assembly.

Kabir said Junaid asked him to stop the work in the area and slapped him when he refused to obey the orders.
However, Junaid denied any altercation between him and the official, and claiming that the issue is being blown out of proportion. "I went there along with police from Rajpora police station. The forest officials were demarcating the land when I politely asked them to stop work. No altercation took place. I did not slap him," Junaid had said.

A few days later, police registered a case of criminal trespass against video journalist ShiekhUmar Altaf on a complaint filed by Junaid's father Rashid Ahmad, who is also a journalist.
Reacting to the filing of FIR, Kashmir Video Journalists Association said the act was an attempt to "browbeat the media into silence for reporting the story of the PRO of Finance Minister who beat up a Forest Department official for doing his job".
Drabu said, "The issue which has been raised of FIR with Police, it was field by a citizen of a country, who has nothing to do with PDP or the Government. He is senior journalist. His name is Rashid Ahmed."

"A journalist goes to his house, trespasses his house without permission and videographs him in his night suit and his wife as well... It is unethical and that becomes an issue," the finance minister said.
"It was not done either by government or by PDP, or Finance Ministry," he added.