SRINAGAR, 26 May 2006 — Four domestic tourists including two children were killed in a powerful grenade explosion by militants here where the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh concluded his two-day visit yesterday.
Police said a tourist bus carrying tourists from Surat, Gujarat, was attacked by militants with a powerful hand grenade at Batpora in the city outskirts last evening that exploded inside the bus injuring 11 occupants, four of whom including the two children later succumbing to injuries in the Soura Medical Institute where they had been brought for emergency treatment. Attending doctors said seven others, all of them tourists, have been admitted to the hospital for specialized treatment.
The dead were identified as eight-year-old Thinnal, 15-year-old Krishna, 18-year-old Khusboo and eight-year-old Robin. This is the second attack on domestic tourists this week.
The blast underscored the need for the peace mission by Manmohan, who earlier met with moderate separatists and yesterday announced a new group to examine Kashmir’s special autonomous status under the constitution.
The working group “will deliberate on matters relating to the special status of Jammu and Kashmir within the Indian union,” he told a round-table conference with pro-India politicians here. Under its accession to India in 1947 upon independence from Britain, Kashmir was granted autonomy over all sectors excluding communications, defense and foreign affairs. But those powers under Article 370 of the constitution have been eroded over the years.
Manmohan said last year that a resolution of the quarrel over Kashmir could lie in increased autonomy, noting it was the only Indian state with its own constitution.
The group would also “deliberate on effective devolution of powers among different regions to meet regional, sub-regional and ethnic aspirations,” Manmohan said at the close of the two-day meeting on the Himalayan region’s future. There was no immediate reaction from Kashmiri leaders. But they have in the past ruled out autonomy as a solution to the nearly six-decade-old dispute.
A key separatist politician also ruled out greater autonomy. “Any solution within the Indian constitution is not acceptable to us,” Shabir Shah said. A strike called by separatists to oppose the talks closed shops and offices in Srinagar and left streets largely deserted for a second day yesterday.
The talks were attended by 30 pro-India politicians and boycotted by separatists, but Manmohan called them “fruitful and engaging.”
The conference also took place against the backdrop of a wider peace process between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
The conference also endorsed the setting up of four other working groups, ones to improve the lives of people hit by the revolt, boost the insurgency-shattered economy and strengthen ties across the heavily militarized Line of Control dividing Kashmir’s Indian and Pakistani parts.
Manmohan also promised the government would review cases of rebels keen to return home to Indian Kashmir from the Pakistani zone and review cases of all detainees being held in connection with the insurgency, vowing “zero tolerance” for the killing of suspected rebels in custody.
— With input from agencies
