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471 held in police crack down in Valley
SRINAGAR: The Kashmir valley remained paralysed for the 27th day on Thursday even as two deaths on Tuesday pushed the region to the brink just as it was limping
SRINAGAR: The Kashmir valley remained paralysed for the 27th day on Thursday even as two deaths on Tuesday pushed the region to the brink just as it was limping back towards normalcy.
State police arrested 349 persons and detained 122 more as it launched a massive crackdown against “hooligans and miscreants”.
Several protest rallies broke out in different parts of the Valley on Thursday, with scores injured in ensuing clashes with security personnel.
Reports from south Kashmir said more than 25 people were injured in Anantnag district. In Bandipora district, hundreds of people offered midday prayers in the open as a mark of protest.
Most towns across Kashmir continued to remain under curfew-like restrictions in view of the unrelenting protests. Schools, colleges, business establishments, petrol pumps, banks and private offices remained closed while public transport remained off roads.
Meanwhile, senior separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani has written a letter to the SAARC summit in Pakistan and requested the office of SAARC secretary-general, Arjun Bahadur Thapa, to urge India to accept the disputed nature of Jammu-Kashmir and announce the acceptance of the people’s right to self determination, announce rapid demilitarisation process from Jammu-Kashmir, repeal “draconian” laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and Public Safety Act (PSA), and release all the political prisoners, among other demands.
The separatist camp also extended the shutdown call in Kashmir till August 5, calling for a march to the famous Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar on Friday.
Meanwhile, Jammu and Kashmir HC upheld the directions passed by Chief Judicial Magistrate to lodge FIR against an DySP in case of killing of a youth in Srinagar.
DOCS PROTEST
The sight of an 80-year-old woman lying in hospital, bruised and battered during a protest, with multiple fractures or the innocent face of four-year-old Zuhra Zahoor recuperating from pellet wounds have prompted doctors like Adil Ashraf to react.
After treating hundreds of people, including injured children, injured in the past 27 days of unrest, doctors of the Government Medical College (GMC) and associated hospitals like Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital on Thursday came out to protest, asking the government to stop the brutal use of force.
The doctors said that they were forced to react owing to the mental trauma they have gone through after treating hundreds of those injured by bullets and pellets. “Nobody can tell the tale of this horror better than a doctor who treats victims. The profession of a doctor by its very nature demands vast endurance but when even a doctor breaks down, as is happening in our casualties these days, it clearly means that all limits have been crossed,” said Ashraf, a resident doctor at SMHS.
Scores of other doctors, medical students and GMC employees assembled in the college lawns against the “gross human rights violations” in Kashmir and demanded a ban on use of pellet guns.
