The riot police on Saturday fired teargas canisters and rifle shots in the air to break up protests by thousands of Kashmiri villagers during the funeral of three local men killed by the troops allegedly in a staged gunfight near the Line of Control earlier.

The Army is once again in the dock as the preliminary police investigations have proved involvement of its men in yet another incident of fake encounter killings near the Line of Control (LoC).

Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant alliance United Jihad Council (UJC) is ready to hold talks with the Centre but doesn’t think laying down arms should be made a precondition for the discourse. Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s latest conditional offer for talks has been welcomed by the ruling National Conference-Congress

UPA chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi will visit Jammu and Kashmir on May 29, ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s two-day tour of the state scheduled to begin on June 7.

The security forces on Wednesday killed a divisional commander of frontline indigenous Kashmiri militant outfit Hizb-ul-Mujahideen with two others in a gunfight in southern Pulwama district.

Starving for issues to raise or speak about in public to disparage the government or, as their critics have alleged, to justify their very existence, the Kashmiri separatists are out to sound alarm bells about the “real motive” behind holding the Census in the restive state.