Srinagar, June 25
Two men were killed in the police firing in Budgam and Srinagar amidst series of clashes in Kashmir today. The people were agitating against the forestland transfer to the Amarnath Shrine Board. They clashed with security forces.
A youth, Farooq Ahmad, died when a bullet fired by the police in the air to scare away a rampaging mob in Budgam district hit him when he was standing on the second floor of his house, the police said. In another incident, one man was killed in downtown Srinagar in the police firing. Officials said he had not been identified as yet.
The police fired at several places as protests spread beyond the capital city, across the valley and groups of people agitating against the land transfer clashed with security forces. Though there is no official confirmation, reports from different sources put the injury figures over 70, including more than 15 police and CRPF personnel.
The roads bore a deserted look since morning and a large number of schools were closed, transport services crippled and work at government offices were severely affected as many employees refrained from venturing out.
Protestors in Ganderbal district blocked the road leading to Baltal today and threw stones at passing vehicles, including those carrying pilgrims. They had yesterday tried to vandalise forest minister Qazi Afzal’s house.
”It reflects the people’s anger and distrust for outgoing governor Lt-Gen S.K. Sinha’s (retired) extra-constitutional ways of conducting himself and running the shrine board, and government’s silence over the matter,” a veteran journalist of the state said.
Apprehensive authorities fanned out security forces on the road and around important official establishments and beefed up security on the Amarnath route. “It is a situation which has the potential of worsening as it is the accumulated anger of the people over a host of things. It’s just not the small issue of transfer of land to the shrine board, that was just a trigger,” a top police official told The Tribune.
What has come as a surprise to even separatists, whose top leaders like S.A.S. Gilani and Shabir Shah are under house arrest, is the way the people have responded to the protest call against the land transfer, and it has achieved what their several calls for pro-freedom movements had not in the past.
