Over a dozen people were injured, one of them seriously, in fresh street clashes in Kashmir even as curfew-like restrictions were in force in summer capital Srinagar and some other parts of the Valley on Monday.
Tensions run high and residents are seething with anger over the killing of two students in the firing by security forces on protesters in southern district of Pulwama on Sunday.
Clashes broke out between curfew-defying crowds and the police in Kakapora area of Pulwama, 28-km south of here, on Monday, reports said.
Three protesters were injured. One of them — Muhammad Yusuf Mir — was seriously wounded after being hit by teargas canisters fired by the police to quell stone-throwing mobs, witnesses and hospital sources said. A mob also targeted a police post in the area, prompting cops to use force, reports said.
Violent protests also broke out in parts of summer capital Srinagar. Groups of youth took to streets in defiance of restrictions and burned used tyres to vent their anger. Several policemen also sustained injures in the clashes, officials said.
A report from southern Anantnag said that a Class 12 student, Ozair Ahmed Bhat, has been operated upon in a local hospital after he was allegedly beaten up mercilessly and then pushed down from the first floor of a tuition centre by CRPF jawans, causing severe injuries to him. Witnesses said that the CRPF men forced their entry into the tuition centre after they came under stone-pelting by a group of youth.
In Sunday’s shooting and teargas shelling, two persons were killed and 10 others injured.
The police said one of the victims Shaista Hameed was hit by a bullet while being evacuated from the area after fighting broke out between militants and security forces and that the other slain youth Danish Farooq Mir was hit by a teargas canister fired by the police to quell a stone-throwing mob.
But residents refuted the police claim and alleged that 22-year-old Shaista received fatal bullet injuries while sitting on the porch of her house and that Mir too was not part of the protest but playing cricket in a nearby ground when hit by a bullet.
Doctors who attended on him also contradicted the police version and said that Mir, an engineering student, had received a bullet wound in the back of his neck and that most of the other injured civilians had been fired above the waist.
The police said 15 of its men and six Army jawans were injured in stone-pelting incidents and that two of the injured Army jawans were hit in their head in the mob attack. It also said that one Lashkar-e-Taiba militant, Adil Ahmed Shergojri, was killed in the encounter but two of his accomplices escaped taking advantage of the chaos created after residents held protests and indulged in heavy stone-pelting on security forces.
Pulwama’s deputy commissioner Niraj Kumar has ordered a time-bound magisterial probe into the circumstances that led to civilian casualties in the firing on Sunday. He has appointed additional DC Shahbaz Ahmed Mirza as inquiry officer and asked him to complete the probe within 15 days.
Amid rising tensions, the police and CRPF fanned out in large numbers overnight to enforce a security lockdown in areas falling under half-a-dozen police stations in summer capital Srinagar. Pulwama town and its neighbourhood remained under curfew since Sunday night. Police authorities said that restrictions under Section 144 Crpc were being enforced to prevent breach of peace. “Restrictions have been imposed in the areas under Srinagar police stations of Khanyar, Rainawari, Nowhatta, M.R.Gunj, Safakadal and Maisuma,” a police spokesman said.
The police and CRPF reinforcements were rushed also to other towns, including Anantnag, Shopian, Budgam, Bandipore, Tral, Kulgam, Sopore and Baramulla, which with the rest of the Valley observed a near complete shutdown to mourn and protest the killings. The call for one-day strike was issued by various separatist parties whose senior leaders have been placed under house arrest. The authorities also suspended train services within the Valley “as a precautionary measure”.
Meanwhile, pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front leader Muhammad Yasin Malik, among those placed under house arrest on Sunday evening, was evacuated to a private hospital here on Monday morning as he was running high fever. JKLF said that its leader contracted acute infection past week at Srinagar central prison.
