SRINAGAR, India, 9 May 2006 — Angry demonstrators fought pitched street battles with police in Indian Kashmir’s main city yesterday, as they demanded strong government action over a sex scandal allegedly involving bureaucrats, police officials and politicians.
Hundreds of veiled women, children and men marched through central Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state, calling for the government to punish those involved in the scandal that has sparked outrage in Muslim-majority Kashmir.
Carrying placards and shouting slogans demanding “severest punishment to the guilty,” protesters broke through police barricades, throwing stones and bricks.
Security forces used water cannons and bamboo truncheons to disperse the demonstrators, said Hasib Mughal, a police officer. Several demonstrators, a policeman and a television cameraman were injured, Mughal said.
Protesters also forced the closure of shops in Srinagar’s main business district.
The scandal was unearthed after videos and multimedia messages on mobile phones showing nude girls and amateur porn films began circulating in Srinagar.
Police arrested a woman suspected of running the prostitution ring involving teenage and young girls last week. On Friday angry mobs razed her home, burning her furniture and household property.
During questioning by police, the woman revealed the names of several bureaucrats, police officers and local politicians who she said were involved in the scandal, officials said. Yesterday, the state’s top elected official, Ghulam Nabi Azad, urged people to end protests. “Please exercise patience till the investigations are complete. My government is in no mood to spare anyone involved in the case,” Azad told reporters.
Earlier, state officials asked the federal Central Bureau of Investigation, India’s equivalent of the FBI, to probe the case, citing the alleged involvement of influential figures in the scandal.
The scandal has dominated public attention in Kashmir, where few things make headlines other than violence related to the separatist insurgency raging in the region since 1989.
More than 67,000 people have been killed in the insurgency by rebels fighting for the region’s independence or its merger with Pakistan.
