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.
Scores were injured, including several policemen who were attacked with stones and other missiles by irate mobs, in Nadihal-Rafiabad area and at neighbouring Baramulla, reports said. The police, however, confirmed only eight persons sustained minor injuries in these clashes.
The Army had said on April 30 that it killed three infiltrating terrorists during a gunfight in Machael sector along the Line of Control.
The bodies of the slain men were buried at a Muslim cemetery at Kalaroos near the de facto border but they turned out to be three men from Nadihal village outside Baramulla town who had gone missing three days before the purported encounter.
The police on Friday exhumed the bodies and handed them over to their relatives after identification.
An Army major and his men involved in the incident, against whom a case of kidnapping and murder already stands registered at the local police station, are likely to be taken into custody soon, the police sources here said.
The police has already arrested three persons, including a Territorial Army jawan, a special police officer and one of their accomplices who were allegedly working for the Army.
The Army has assured chief minister Omar Abdullah a fasttrack inquiry will be instituted to ascertain the facts. “In case any wrongdoing comes to light, expeditious action will be taken,” it said here on Friday.
Reports from Nadihal said that mourners carrying the coffins of the slain youth Shahzad Ahmed, 20, Riyaz Ahmad Lone, 17, and Mohammad Shafi Lone, 22, and chanting pro-freedom slogans tried to relocate to Baramulla town but were soon confronted by the police and paramilitary forces at Chakla on the Baramulla-Kupwara highway. Meanwhile, clashes between irate mobs and police erupted in Baramulla too.