Srinagar: Intense clashes between groups of students and the security forces which broke out outside a Srinagar school on Monday morning have spread to the City’s commercial hub Lal Chowk (Red Square) and its neighbourhood. The stone-pelting mobs have been joined by groups of youth from neighbouring localities and the security forces are facing tough time in controlling the situation.
The entire area has been filled with acrid smell of tear and pepper gas as the policemen fired dozens of canisters to disperse the stone-throwing mobs of students along Moulana Azad Road, Residency Road, Regal Chowk and Lal Chowk areas of uptown Srinagar.
This has caused severe eye, respiratory and skin irritation among the passers-by, traders and shoppers in these areas and they can be seen fleeing towards backstreets of Maisuma, Aabi Guzzar and Sheikh Bagh. At one place, the police also fired rifles over the heads of stone-pelting mobs.
Several students and security personnel have been injured. The police arrested about half a dozen protesting students, the witnesses said.
The clashes erupted after the police intercepted students when they came out of Sri Pratap Higher Secondary Institution along Moulana Azad Road, chanting slogans against the police and the government. The students said that they wanted to protest against the atrocities inflicted on them allegedly by the police during the recent student unrest in the Valley.
The police and CRPF, however, did not allow them to take on the Moulana Azad Road and in order to push them back into the campus fired teargas canisters. The students reacted by hurling stones on the security personnel, triggering clashes.
The schools and colleges had earlier in the morning reopened for normal class work after remaining shut or witnessing disturbances for about one week. The authorities had ordered closure of the Valley’s educational institutions “as a precautionary measure” in view of protests inflamed by the alleged police atrocities on the students of a degree college in southern Pulwama town on April 15.
While over fifty students including females had been injured in Pulwama, about 150 more students and over a couple of dozen security personnel were injured in subsequent incidents elsewhere in the Valley.
The protests continued even after Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, appealed the people to help restore peace and normalcy in the Valley to ensure smooth academic, economic and tourism activities.
She said, “Kashmir already witnessed tragic human, educational and economic loss and it can’t afford be pushed into perpetual disempowerment and darkness”.
However, as the ire over the Pulwama incidents continue to draw the ire, Kashmir University Students Union (KUSU), proscribed by the then government in 2009, called upon the student community to resume their classes after what it said a successful display of resistance, unity and valour. It was the KUSU which had earlier called for protests on April 17 against the Pulwama.
