Kashmir boils as youth attacked over beef rumours dies

Violence erupted in several parts of the Kashmir Valley on Sunday after a 16-year-old driver, injured in a petrol bomb attack on a truck on October 9, died in a New Delhi hospital.

Zahid Rasool Bhat, who succumbed at New Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital on Sunday, was on his way to Srinagar along with his helper Showkat, when a mob set on fire a truck in which they were sleeping on Srinagar-Jammu national highway near Udhampur on October 9.

Bhat had suffered 70 per cent burns in the attack and both he and Showkat had been shifted to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi next day by the state government.

Bhat breathed his last on Sunday. His body reached on Sunday afternoon, officials said.The attack was carried out in Jammu’s Udhampur after rumours that three cows were killed in the area. Officials said tests had revealed the cows had died because of food poisoning and the rumours of slaughter were spread to create communal tension in the Hindu-majority area.

The attack, allegedly by a Hindu mob, took place in the aftermath of a beef party hosted by Independent legislator Engineer Rashid in Srinagar two days earlier.

As the news of Bhat’s death reached Kashmir, angry youth took to the streets in several areas of the Valley.  The protesters threw stones at the police, who replied with tear-gas shells and canes to drive them away at a village in Anantnag district, which is the deceased’s native place, reports said.