Jammu simmers as Sikh’s hair chopped
Chopping off a Sikh resident’s hair allegedly by a group of Muslim youth which objected to his looking for vegetables at a local market during a separatist-sponsored shutdown in Jammu and Kashmir’s southern Pulwama district set off widespread protests by the members of state’s minority community on Thursday.
The incident being widely condemned across the state has prompted various mainstream and separatist political parties to hold meetings with representatives of Sikhs to assure them the culprits will be penalised.
Chief minister Omar Abdullah said the security and welfare of the state’s 350,000-strong Sikh population will be ensured by the state government and the elements which have a ploy of disturbing the traditional communal harmony of the state up their sleeves will be dealt with sternly. The separatist Hurriyat Conference alliance, on the other hand, termed the incident as part of a “deep-rooted conspiracy” aimed at driving a wedge between the Sikhs and majority Muslim community and “blemish’ the ongoing “freedom struggle.”
Mithan Singh, a resident of Devar, a village outside southern town of Tral, claimed that while on way to work on Wednesday he received a phone call from his colleagues at an Indian Air Force base near the town of Awantipore asking him to fetch them some vegetables.
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