Witnesses said that soon after the bodies of the two persons killed in Friday’s CRPF firing near Amargarh railway station arrived in Sopore late on Friday night, irate crowds again relocated to the railway station and torched a residential quarter. On Saturday morning, the protests swelled with thousands more joining them; they set ablaze the railway station and other property, including the personal belongings of Railway Protection Force personnel who had already fled.
Reports said members of the Indian Reserve Police Force (IRP) opened fire when a huge crowd protesting Friday’s killings in shootings tried to overrun their camp at Naidkhai, Bandipore district. Mudassir Ahmed Lone (21) was killed and another seriously wounded whereas over a dozen protesters sustained injuries in the ensuing stampede, witnesses said.
The killing of the youth sparked off widespread protests in the area during which policemen came under heavy stone-pelting at several places. Among the injured policemen is Bandipore SP Junaid Ahmed, officials said.
Neighbouring Baramulla town witnessed clashes between rock-throwing mobs and CRPF and local policemen throughout Saturday.
In the afternoon, policemen opened fire to quell a violent mob near the main town square, seriously injuring one Javed Ahmed Teli, 32. He died in a Srinagar hospital later.
Pattan, a highway town about 27km northwest of here and the scene of violent protests during which a building of the local police station was torched on Friday, witnessed fresh protests on Saturday as another protester died of gunshot wounds received in police firing earlier.
About a dozen protesters were injured, one of them seriously, in police and CRPF action at Sangam, reports said.
Strict curfew was being enforced in Srinagar even though some areas on the outskirts of the summer capital, including Rambagh, Natipora and Channapora, witnessed renewed clashes between curfew-defying crowds and policemen. However, the main town remained relatively calm with thousands of policemen and CRPF personnel in riot gear enforcing curfew. Even mediapersons were not allowed to venture out on the pretext that the curfew passes issued to them by the district authorities had been cancelled.
However, Srinagar district magistrate Meraj Ahmed Kakroo denied this and assured he would probe an incident in which the editor of a vernacular newspaper alleged that he and his son, who works as managing editor with the publication, were thrashed by CRPF men before being arrested on the way to office.
At Pampore, protesters stopped am IAF bus and, after asking the officials and their family members to disembark, torched the bus and an escort vehicle.
The passengers were not harmed but conducted to the nearby premises of a branch of Jammu and Kashmir Bank, witnesses said, adding that the police later arrived at the scene and rescued them.
At Bijbehara and Sangam bridge, curfew-defying crowds attacked police station Bijbehara and the office of the area sub-district police officer. Several trees were also felled along the Srinagar-Jammu highway to block it, police said.
At Kakpora and Samboora, in south Kashmir, irate crowds attacked a posse of policemen, injuring a Dy SP and several other policemen. A petrol bomb completely gutted a vehicle, the police said.
A police handout issued Saturday evening said, “The situation in various parts of the Valley took an ugly turn when violent mobs went on the rampage at places like Kreeri, Amargarh, Naidkhai and Baramulla in north Kashmir, Panthachowk in Srinagar and Pampore, Bijbehara, Sangam and Kakpora in south Kashmir.” It added, “In order to restrain these unruly crowds from causing further damage to life and property, the police had to fire at different places when all other measures to pacify them failed, as a result of which two persons died and 11 civilians received injuries as a result of lathi-charge and security force firing.”