SRINAGAR: The police on Saturday confiscated the copies of all leading Srinagar English and vernacular newspapers during predawn raids at their press offices in an undeclared information gag which has also shut down the Internet and cellular phone services partially.
Meanwhile, one more person was killed on Saturday and two others were injured in firing by security forces on protesters at Hatmulla in frontier district of Kupwara. Police said the mob attacked a police post in the area and “while dealing with the situation three people were injured one of whom later succumbed”.
Earlier on Friday night, the Cable TV operators were asked to close the services after they refused to block news channels and air only entertainment ones as had been suggested to them by the authorities.
They were, however, allowed to resume work late Saturday evening but told to block Pakistani and other illegal channels. Local news TV channels were banned during summer 2010 unrest which claimed 112 lives in police firings and other actions.
The scenic Kashmir Valley is on the boil for past over one week in the aftermath of the killing of Burhan Muzaffar Wani, the new-age poster boy of insurgency, by the security forces.
As many as 41 people have been killed and nearly 2,000 wounded in security forces firings and other actions in their attempts to contain widespread protests and stone-pelting incidents.
Srinagar, the summer capital of the State, and other major town of the Kashmir Valley continued to reel under curfew and other security restrictions on the eighth consecutive day (Saturday).
A statement issued by the police here said that “stray and intermittent incidents” of stone-pelting were reported from Pothkhah and Dangiwacha in Baramulla and Hatmulla and Langaet areas in frontier Kupwara districts. It also said that an “unruly mob” torched a police guardroom at Wullar Vintage Park in Bandipora district.
The authorities have justified the official gag on media for which no formal order has been issued. Privately, they said “certain curbs” were unavoidable in order to discourage ‘rumour-mongering’ which, they insisted, was “adding fuel to the fire”.
Locals defy curfew for last rites
Kashmir Valley on Saturday witnessed yet another example of Kashmiriyat.
Even though Srinagar with other Valley cities and towns was under curfew, residents came out to join a Hindu family in performing the last rites of an elderly member at Sheikh Mohalla (Maharaj Gunj) in the heart of otherwise volatile central Srinagar.
The family of Deepak Malhotra, a businessman, is one of few thousand Hindu families which chose to stay put when militancy broke out in the Valley in 1989-90.
On Saturday morning, Mr. Malhotra’s aged mother passed away and, when a neighbour got an announcement about it broadcast through a mosque loudspeaker, a large number of residents relocated to the bereaved family’s house after defying curfew and using alleyways where no security forces are usually deployed to enforce restrictions. They participated in the last rites of Mr. Malhotra’s mother.
