SRINAGAR: The security forces battled violent demonstrators at over a dozen places across Srinagar, parts of which were placed under curfew on Saturday, as tensions ran high following the death of a 12-year-old boy Junaid Ahmed.
He was on Friday evening critically injured after being hit by a shower of pellets at his home and died in a local hospital later, sparking widespread anger in Jammu and Kashmir’s summer capital and beyond.
The authorities said that Ahmed was hit when the security forces fired shotgun pellets to quell a protest demonstration outside his home in Srinagar’s Sayeda Pora, Idgah locality. But locals said he was not part of any protest, the claim which has been corroborated by local leaders of ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) including a lawmaker, demanding stern action against the security force personnel involved in the incident.
While enforcing curfew in Srinagar, the security forces also fired teargas canisters into the funeral procession of Ahmed and at several places elsewhere in Srinagar as hundreds of people took to the streets in protest against the death, chanting pro-freedom and anti Indian slogans.
Ahmed’s funeral procession too was targeted with teargas shelling, witnesses said.
While chanting ‘We want freedom’ and ‘Go India, go back’, the mourners marched from Ahmed’s home to nearby Idgah ‘martyrs’ cemetery with his body for burial but were met by police and CRPF who fired warning shots, pellets and tear gas to push them back.
Weapons snatched
Militants snatched two service weapons from Jammu and Kashmir police deployed at a picket set up to secure a cluster of houses of minority Kashmiri Pandits in southern Pulwama on Saturday night.
Reports from Pulwama said that a group of militants appeared at Tumluhal, about 8 kilometres from the district headquarters, entered the police post, overpowered the two cops present there and left after decamping with their two rifles.
Police and CRPF reinforcements from Pulwama town rushed to the village and started searches but to no avail.
