Srinagar: The police and Central armed forces enforced curfew-like restrictions in several parts of Srinagar on Monday to hold back a protest march on the main Army base in restive Kashmir’s summer capital.
The call for the march was issued by an alliance of key separatist leaders to protest the killing of seven civilians in the firing by troops in southern Pulwama district at the weekend.
The police detained Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik, two leaders of the alliance called ‘Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL)’, along with several other activists as they began marching towards Srinagar’s Badami Bagh cantonment where the headquarters of Army’s 15 Corps are also located.
Malik and other members of his Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) were wearing shrouds with ‘Kill us all’ and similar slogans written on these as they emerged of the dark alleys of Srinagar’s Maisuma area but only to be confronted by the police.
The JRL had in its appeal to the people asked them to march towards the highly fortified area “to ask the Government of India to kill us all at one time rather than killing us daily”. The Army termed the JRL call a deliberate attempt by ‘terrorist-separatist-Pakistan nexus’ to pit the civilian population against the security forces and urged the people not to pay heed to it.
While Pulwama town and its neighbourhood remained under curfew on the third consecutive day on Monday, a security lockdown was enforced by J&K police and Central armed forces in eight police station areas of Srinagar.
Elsewhere in the Valley, a shutdown to mourn and protest the killings brought life to a standstill on the third day straight on Monday. At places in Srinagar, irate crowds clashed with security forces which fired teargas canisters to break them up. The former responded by hurling rocks at them.
Meanwhile, a Tehreek-e-Hurriyat leader was arrested Doda district for his alleged links with terrorists, police said.
