SRINAGAR: Massive protests and clashes erupted in Indian Kashmir yesterday after the bodies of two young women were found amid claims that they were raped and murdered by Indian soldiers, officials and locals said. Indian authorities denied the allegations, saying the women appeared to have drowned in a local stream.
Dozens of people were hurt after police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse protesters who hurled rocks at security forces and ransacked a hospital and government offices.
Residents said the two women were abducted, raped and killed by security forces in south Kashmir on Friday. A police statement said a postmortem conducted revealed no marks of violence.
Police official Javaid Masood said authorities recovered the bodies of an 18-year-old woman and her 23-year-old aunt from a local stream yesterday morning. The women were reported missing after they failed to return home from their orchard on Friday, Masood said.
“Post-mortems have been conducted and preliminary investigation suggests that there are no signs of physical assault on the bodies,” Masood said. He added that an investigation into the deaths was ongoing.
Many locals rejected the official explanation. “There are no chances of accidental drowning as the stream is very shallow and even school kids cross it,” said Mushtaq Ahmed, a local resident.
Witnesses said thousands of demonstrators had massed in Shopian town, 60 km south of Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital. The disputed Himalayan region has been intermittently rocked by protests against Indian rule since last year.
Indian security forces fighting separatist militants in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, have been accused in the past of human rights violations, including rape and extrajudicial killings.
