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Shopian anger spreads, Kashmir
singed with protests, curfew, siege, firing
Priyaleen
K Renuka
 SRINAGAR :Kashmir
remained on the boil all through last week, and ever since the Lok
Sabha polls, the valley has been in turmoil. Curfew style
restrictions are in force for more than ten days now, and trouble
has continued for much longer which saw CRPF and other security
personnel going berserk repeatedly and an endless cycle of bandhs,
strikes, lathicharges, firing, curfew, teargas etc.
Now, doctors who
examined the bodies of two Shopian women, whose deaths sparked off
protests across the Valley with securitymen being accused of rape
and murder, have confirmed that both were murdered, saying death was
caused due to head injuries “inflicted by a sharp weapon by a
powerful hand”.
Earlier, CM Omar
Abdullah had expressed doubts on this and had come in for flak from
opposition PDP and other parties.
Two separate
groups of doctors, who conducted the medical examination of the
bodies of 17-year-old Asiya and her pregnant sister-inlaw Neelofar
Jan on May 30 and concluded that they were murdered, have deposed
before a singlemember judicial commission headed by retired High
Court judge Justice Muzaffar Jan.
The report of
the J&K Forensic Science Laboratory,
Srinagar quoted
extensively by The Indian Express newspaper, revealed that doctors
ruled out drowning as the cause of death as was suggested by Chief
Minister Omar Abdullah during a press conference on June1.
Asiya and
Neelofar were found dead a day after they went missing on May 29.
Their deaths sparked off protests across the Valley.
The medical
findings have confirmed suspicions of the family of the two women.
Shopian
protests on
Meanwhile,
protests left nearly 100 people injured over the week as police
fired teargas shells and livebullets at many places including a bid
to stop a march by thousands of protesters from neighbouring
villages to Shopian, 50 km south of
Srinagar.
The march was
called by hard line separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani (79), in
protest against the alleged rape and murder of the two women, who
had gone missing on the evening of May 29 when they were returning
from their orchard in Digam, 3 km west of the town.
Some 10,000
marchers had gathered at one spot in Sofarnaman thus exposing the
Indian government’s efforts at projecting normalcy in
Kashmir
and issuing ads about tourism potential of the state.
The police also
fired hundreds of teargas shells in Shirmal, Pinjora, Narwav,
Ratnipora, Vihal and a dozen other places across the town, to thwart
the marchers. Hundreds of police and CRPF men had laid siege to the
town, plugging all entry and exit points. Residents who could be
reached over the telephone said the town was under a strict curfew.
Barbed-wire barricades were raised on the roads leading to Shopian.
Curfew-like restrictions were also imposed in neighbouring town of
Pulwama.
In
Srinagar,
the state capital, the authorities imposed restrictions on people’s
movements.Over a dozen other separatist leaders including Shabir
Shah, Ashraf Sahrai, Naeem Khan and Nanha Ji Saleem too have also
been taken into custody.
10June 2009
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