The High Court Monday heard the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on Koul Commission over the civilian killings of 2010 and issued a notice to the state government to file objections to the petition by or before July 26.

The PIL was submitted by a social activist and General Secretary Peoples’ Forum, M M Shuja through his Advocate, Shafkat Nazir who has pleaded before the court to direct the government to make the report of Koul Commission public, implement the recommendation of the Commission about compensating the victims’ families and action taken report on the findings.

Chief Justice, Badar Durrez Ahmed and Justice Ali Mohammad Magray issued a notice to the state government to submit its objections before the court by or before July 26.

Shuja said that after hearing the PIL, the High Court directed the government to submit the response to the petition on the next hearing which is scheduled in July when the court opens after vacation.

The Justice (Retd) M. L. Koul Commission, appointed by the Omar Abdullah led NC-Congress government after High Court directions to probe into the killings of 2010 in Kashmir, submitted its report to the Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti on Dec 30 last year.

The 320-page exhaustive report makes several recommendations besides prescribing some operating procedures while dealing with such situations in future, the government had said when the report was submitted to it.

The report is yet to be made public despite six months having passed after it was submitted to the government.

The HC in response to a petition filed by Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front filed after the killings of 2010 uprising, in which 117 unarmed civilians had been killed by Indian forces, had given a direction to the state government to probe the killings and see whether standard operating procedure (SOP) was followed by the forces or not.

The state government had then appointed a one-man judicial commission of Justice (Retd) M L Koul to probe the killings in 2014.

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