Srinagar: A day after Union home minister Amit Shah said in the Rajya Sabha that there was normality in Jammu and Kashmir, Srinagar and most parts of the Valley observed a partial to complete shutdown on Thursday.
Overnight, a cab, four shops and an equal number of wooden carts were torched by unknown persons in different parts of Srinagar, triggering panic among its residents and the traders’ community. However, the police said four shops in the Gadda Kocha, Bahuri Kadal areas caught fire due to an electric short-circuit.
Earlier during the day Wednesday, an auto-rickshaw accessories shop in Srinagar’s Syed Mansoor Sahib locality was gutted in a mysterious fire. A teashop outside nearby the government-run SMHS Hospital was destroyed in a similar incident a day before.
Life remained disrupted across the Kashmir Valley for over 100 days after the Centre stripped J&K of its special constitutional status and split the state into two Union territories on August 5.
However, marketplaces in central and northern parts of the Valley, including uptown Srinagar, had in the past one week remained open for longer hours and public transport services too had started plying on some routes. The authorities said shopkeepers did not
open their establishments in Srinagar’s commercial hub Lal Chowk and its neighbourhood and in various towns of south Kashmir after “miscreants” issued threats to traders and transporters. However, life was unaffected in Baramulla and Sopore, two major towns of north Kashmir, they said.
Meanwhile, the police said it has arrested a “terrorist associate” involved in issuing threats to and intimidating locals in Tral area of southern Pulwama district. A police statement here said the accused, Asif Ahmad Bhat, a resident of Larow Jageer Tral, was “involved in publishing and circulation of threat posters in the area”. The police claimed Bhat is linked to Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and was “communicating with terrorists of the proscribed outfit, and was also involved in arson and damaging a local chemist shop in the area”.
