Kashmir Valley was tense on Wednesday as the authorities enforced a security clampdown to foil attempts by BJP activists and Muslim separatists to pour into Srinagar’s central square Lal Chowk.
Separatists had also called for observing Republic Day as a “black day”, forcing the authorities to detain or place their leadership under house arrest and take other tough preventive measures. However, the shutdown call was widely obeyed by people.
The tricolour was, however, raised at about 10 places at and around Lal Chowk.
Though curfews and other similar security restrictions, shutdowns, arrests or heavy deployments of armed forces on the streets is not new to the local population, the residents once again forced to remain indoors glued to television sets to know if the Hindu nationalists and Muslim separatists can make to historic Lal Chowk for the articulation of their divergent and irreconcilable political positions.
Seven BJP activists were arrested on way to Lal Chowk where they wanted to hoist the tricolour. A lone BJP supporter later identified as Srikant from Gurgaon in Haryana appeared at Regal Chowk, less than 100 yards Lal Chowk, holding the national flag in his hands at 8.30 am. Policemen quickly swung into action and arrested him. Later at about 11 am, six BJP activists emerged from a city hotel and began marching towards Lal Chowk. They too were arrested by the police. Officials said these activists belonging to far off AP, Gujarat, Orissa, UP, Assam and West Bengal had quietly checked in the hotel a couple of days ago saying they were tourists.
Pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) faction chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik, who went into hiding a few days ago to evade arrest, surfaced in Maisuma neighbourhood along with thirty activists. But they too failed to relocate to Lal Chowk as policemen quickly seized them and then bundled them into armoured vehicles before removing them to a nearby police station. Among those arrested are Bilal Gani Lone and Shahid-ul-Islam of Mirwaiz-led Hurriyat Conference faction which had endorsed the JKLF’s call for parallel march to Lal Chowk to counter the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha’s Ekta Yatra.
Lal Chowk, which has been chosen for such displays on numerous occasions in the past by almost all political players, was sealed ahead of Republic Day with laying of concertina barbed wire on the roads and side streets opening into the historic square. Hundreds of CRPF and local policemen in riot gear stood guard at and around Lal Chowk.
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BJP men attack J&K minister car
age correspondent
JAMMU
Jan. 26: The enraged BJP activists on Wednesday gave a vent to their ire against the state government for arresting their leaders and foiling the yatra by attacking minister for finance Abdul Rahim Rather’s car on Wednesday evening. The party activists gheraoed the car and pulled off the state flag perched on one side of the car and threw it on the road.