His mournful colleagues say he was new to the secured street of Khanyar Police Station where he couldn’t screen his shyness during his posting and regular patrols.
But the fresh-faced cop during his September-12 outing was fired behind his back, making the headman of the hundred-thousand strong police to promise payback.
The loss is still a lament for many of his colleagues at the station where he was on probation and learning nuances of policing.
“He was too good a cop,” says a constable. “His kind conduct reflected in his public and case handlings.”
During his police stint, his colleagues recall Sub-Inspector Arshid Ahmad once being deputed to his hometown Kupwara for nabbing some robbers. “He caught them, had lunch with them and counselled them for hours.”
Kashmir conflict, laments the slain SI’s colleague, often consume the helping hands. “Despite cops working for the betterment of the society, a uniform is considered as the sign of treachery.”
The cop’s killing caught on camera shocked his friends and family.
“Arshid was a kind and generous human being,” Nasir Khuehami, a noted student leader of Kashmir, wrote in his obit.
“He qualified exam and selected as SI in 2018. His younger brother Asif was my roommate during University days. His death puts us all in shock. Rest in Peace, Brother. This bloody conflict taking precious lives away from us.”
Arshid was 27 and the latest to get consumed in the enormity of the attacks on policemen in Kashmir.
In June this year, an off-duty cop was shot dead near his house in the Old City’s Saidapora area. Five days later, CID Inspector Pervaiz Ahmad was killed near his home in Nowgam area of Srinagar.
On August 3, a cop was injured when militants opened fire on a police jeep parked at Shiraz Chowk. Four days later, another police officer was killed in a militant attack in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district.
SI Arshid was shot at pointblank range on September 12, near his workstation.
On his wreath-ceremony, DGP Dilbag Singh said it seems a new militant group has been formed, while IGP Vijay Kumar, days later, stated that only four militants are active in the Srinagar city.
“Young Arshid was on duty in Gousia Hospital to collect medical sampling and RTPCR of an accused who by a court order was being shifted from custody to judicial remand in an extortion case,” Mubashir Bukhari, SP North, told The Himalayan Post.
“For his security, four people accompanied him, but he preferred to visit the hospital and come back to the police station all alone.”
Unlike many of his cloistered colleagues, Arshid used to visit cafés, hill stations and woods alone like a civilian and without any security.
“Whenever his police friends cautioned him about his random visits to these places, he would say, ‘Why would someone kill me when I haven’t wronged anyone,’ ” Asif, Arshid’s younger brother, says.
“But he never expected to be killed like this. The gunmen in Kashmir see uniform as enough reason of treason.”
Arshid’s final homecoming triggered a massive funeral in his native Kalmoona village of north Kashmir’s Kupwara district. Besides two former chief ministers of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir paying tributes to the fallen cop, hundreds of mourners including women participated in his farewell.
“People loved my brother because he used to help and guide everyone,” Asif, studying Science in Dehradun, says. “That’s why his burial witnessed a mass gathering.”
Soon after his Masters in Botany from Dehradun’s Baba Fareed Institute of Technology, Arshid had applied for a position in Food and Supplies Department, and a Sub-Inspector’s post.
“By choice,” Asif says, “my brother decided to join police because his ideas towards the society were different.
He believed in love and solving issuing with nobility. He guided students as per their choices and interest and wished every Kashmiri to be educated and empowered.”