Kashmir, Jammu remain shut to mourn killing

Kashmir Valley and some parts of Jammu region remained shut for the day on Monday to mourn and protest Kashmiri trucker Zahid Rasool Butt’s murder.

He was among two crew members of a Valley-bound truck who received grave burn injuries in an attack by a group of Hindu zealots at Shiv Nagar, along the Jammu-Srinagar highway, in the night of October 9. Earlier that day several areas in Udhampur district had witnessed protests by Hindus amid rumours that three cows had been killed. Officials had said forensic tests had revealed that the cows whose carcasses were found in Chenani area of Udhampur had died of food poisoning and rumours of slaughter were circulated to provoke communal tension in the Hindu-majority areas of Jammu. Butt died in New Delhi’s Safdarjang Hospital on Sunday.

Nine persons have been arrested and booked under the state’s stringent Public Safety Act (PSA). However, the main accused, a former corporator, is absconding and the police says efforts are underway to arrest him. Udhampur DC Shahid Iqbal Choudhary said all the accused have been booked also under Section 302 (murder) of the state’s own Ranbir Penal Code (RPC).

Protests were held also in the highway towns of Ramban and Banihal, and neighbouring Doda and Bhaderwah, even as the Srinagar-Jammu highway remained closed for the second day in view of protests and heightening tension. The authorities cited security reasons for ordering the closure of the highway, the only surface link between the Valley and the rest of India. In Srinagar, curfew-life restrictions were being enforced by riot police and CRPF personnel in politically-sensitive areas under eight police stations. Similar conditions prevailed in southern Anantnag and Bijbehara towns whereas security had been beefed up further in other major towns of the Muslim-majority Valley to hold back protests.

Most separatist leaders and prominent activists were placed under house arrest or detained at police stations ahead of the strike to prevent them from relocating to Batengo to attend Butt’s funeral.

His body was flown here from Delhi in a state aircraft on Sunday evening and then handed over to the family for the last rites. Clashes had erupted in Batengo and neighbouring areas soon after news reached there that Butt had succumbed.

Life was thrown out of gear across the Valley, and also in Chenab Valley of Jammu region, as various separatist organisations and trade and transport unions had called a one-day strike to mourn and protest Butt’s murder by “BJP and RSS goons”. For the first time in 25 years the Kashmiri Pandit Sangarsh Samiti (KPSS), a representative body of Kashmiri Hindus who stayed on in the Valley in 1990 when the majority of the minority community fled after the outbreak of insurgency, also endorsed the strike call.

Shops and other businesses, including banks, educational institutions and most government offices, remained shut, whereas transport was off the roads across the Valley and in parts of Jammu region. Kashmir University and J&K Board of School Education have postponed all examinations scheduled for Monday. The first convocation of the Islamic University for Science and Technology, scheduled for Monday at Awantipore, near here, which was to be attended by Union HRD minister Smriti Irani, has been deferred. The railways suspended services between Baramulla and Banihal as a precautionary measure.

Security personnel in riot gear had erected barricades at intersections along the Srinagar-Anantnag road. In Srinagar itself roads had been blocked by concertina razor wire and “bunker vehicles” to enforce curfew-like restrictions.

The state Cabinet, which met here to discuss various administrative matters, including transfers and postings of IAS and KAS officers, mourned the death of Zahid. It also sanctioned ex gratia relief of '500,000 for the bereaved family.