Violent clashes erupted after the funeral of Kashmiri trucker Zahid Rasool Butt in his native village Batengo, 53 km south of here, on Monday. The police fired tear gas and pepper gas canisters into the stone-throwing crowds of youth, witnesses said.
At the funeral itself, which was attended by thousands of people, pro-freedom slogans were chanted and a youth waved Pakistan’s national flag. Though the area had been sealed by thousands of policemen and CRPF personnel after their arrival overnight, a large number of men and women from neighbouring villages and some places further away, after violating curfew-like restrictions, reached Batengo to join the funeral procession.
Kashmir Valley and some parts of Jammu region remained shut for the day to mourn and protest 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.
Nine persons have been arrested and booked under the state’s stringent Public Safety Act.
