Thaindian News

Srinagar, Feb 1 (IANS) About 30 people were injured here Monday in day-long clashes between security forces and stone-pelting protesters enraged over the death of a young man hit by a tear smoke shell a day earlier.
After a 17-year-old youth died Sunday in Rajouri Kadal area after being hit in the head by the tear smoke shell, tension gripped the populous Old City areas as well as uptown Maisuma locality.

Mobs armed with stones engaged the Jammu and Kashmir Police as well as the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) at Rajouri Kadal, Safakadal, Kawdara, Nowhatta, Rainawari, Khanyar and Maisuma localities of the city. Entire streets turned into battlefields.

“Nine policemen, six CRPF personnel and 15 protesters were injured in Srinagar,” a senior police officer said here.

Outnumbered police used batons and tear smoke shells to restore order as furious mobs attacked the Nowhatta and Safakadal police stations with stones.

“We have given strict orders to the security forces to use utmost restraint while addressing the law and order situation,” Inspector General of Kashmir zone Farooq Ahmad said.

Ahmad requested parents to ensure their children do not hurl stones and other missiles at security forces so as to prevent police retaliation that proved fatal Sunday.

An assistant sub-inspector of police was suspended Sunday for firing the tear smoke shell that killed the youth.

Relatives of the youth asserted that he was not part of any mob and was moving in a lane in Rajouri Kadal when he was hit by the tear smoke shell, causing his death.

Earlier Monday, a huge procession of mourners led by Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik offered the funeral prayers at the Jamia mosque in the Old City and later carried the body of the youth to the Martyrs’ graveyard in Eidgah area.

Immediately after the burial, mobs of angry youths rained stones at police and CRPF personnel in Old City areas and Maisuma locality.

Even as the authorities maintained that adequate action against the suspended police officer would follow in accordance with the law, both the groups of the separatist Hurriyat conference called for a shutdown in the Kashmir Valley Tuesday against “the increasing human rights violations by the Indian security forces in Kashmir”.

Otherwise at loggerheads with each other, it is for the first time after months that both the hardliners and the moderates in the separatist camp have supported each other while calling for a shutdown.