SRINAGAR, Feb 1: Angry villagers on Thursday hurled stones at police in occupied Kashmir as they exhumed the body of a man believed to be a carpenter who authorities had claimed was a militant killed in a gunbattle.

The father of the missing carpenter collapsed in tears on seeing the body. “I can tell you the body is of my son. I can recognise him. He is my blood,” said a sobbing Ghulam Rasool Padder in Sumbhal.Reporters at the graveyard where the body had been buried said part of the face was mutilated.

The exhumation came after the Human Rights Watch branded the killing an ‘extrajudicial execution’ at the hands of police.

“This epidemic of fake ‘encounter killings’ by the security forces has plagued Kashmir for too long,” Brad Adams, the Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

Occupied Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Wednesday ordered a judicial probe into the man’s disappearance and said anyone found guilty of wrongdoing would be given ‘exemplary punishment’.

Abdul Rahman Padder, 35, disappeared on Dec 8 after arriving here and was shot dead a day later. A report in the Indian Express said he had been arrested by Srinigar police who later described him as a Pakistani militant killed in a gunbattle.—AFP