SRINAGAR: Thousands of angry people took to the streets in Kashmir to denounce the killing yesterday of a protester by government troops who fired rubber bullets and tear gas shells at Muslim demonstrators chanting anti-India slogans, an official said.
Shops and businesses were closed and public buses stayed off the roads across much of the region yesterday in response to a strike called by Muslim separatist groups protesting Indian rule in the disputed region.
The strike was called by the Jammu-Kashmir Coordination Committee, whose members include Muslim separatist leaders and representatives of businesses, lawyers and government employees.
The angry crowd threw rocks at the soldiers, who responded by firing rubber bullets and tear gas shells. Several people, both protesters and troops, were injured. “The injured were taken to SMHS hospital where Javed Ahmad Bhat succumbed,” Wasim Qureshi, the doctor who attended to him, said.
News of the youth’s death fueled more clashes as thousands took to the streets to protest the killing. In at least two other areas of Srinagar, protesters burned tires and hurled rocks at troops who fired tear gas to control the crowds, Tripathi said.
As the news about the death of Javed spread here, tension gripped the city as mobs at Kak Sarai and Habba Kadal started pelting Indian police and paramilitary. The body of Javed was taken to the martyr’s graveyard at Eidgah for burial in a procession in the afternoon, after it was handed over to his relatives by the police.
Release of the detenues rounded up by the police and paramilitary, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in its recent crackdown on the separatists and protesters was the other issue on which yesterday’s call was given by the Coordination Committee, which is a conglomerate of both groups of All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), traders and businessmen of the valley.
In another development Mirwaiz Maulvi Omar Farooq, the chairman of the moderate APHC, announced expansion of the Coordination Committee by involving academicians, writers, doctors and human rights activists. “The good news is that bureaucrats and civil servants have also offered their support,” Mirwaiz said. Police kept three key separatist leaders under house arrest for a second day yesterday to prevent them from leading possible demonstrations, a police officer said.
