About 35 youth were arrested during the operation.
Hundreds of policemen and the CRPF reached Nund Resh Colony Bemina in the afternoon, equipped with automatic guns, tear gas and smoke shells with sticks. The forces cordoned off the area and people were made to assemble at one place, where they were subjected to an identification parade in front a parked police vehicles having some informers within. After the informers identified 35 youth, the police arrested them.
The youth were arrested as they were indulging in stone-pelting, said a police official. “They were also inciting the people to block the Srinagar-Baramulla road,” he added. Even as the operation concluded, people of the area held strong protest demonstrations, blocking the Srinagar-Baramulla road. “Police and security forces arrested innocent youth. The government wants to crush the ongoing protests in Valley by crushing people,” alleged Nazir Ahmad, a protester.
Halima a housewife, whose son was also arrested, threatened that people would disallow vehicular traffic movement on the Baramulla-Srinagar road if the arrested youth was not released. “The government does not arrest the police and security men, who kill civilians. But they arrest the protestors, raising voice against the killing,” she charged.
The protesters threw stones at the police who had to burst smoke shells and then resort to caning the protesters. Reports of clashes were also received from some other areas including Chanapora and the old city of Srinagar despite the curfew.
Curfew was imposed in Srinagar district and some parts of north and south Kashmir. In rest of Kashmir, normal life was paralysed in view of a separatist-sponsored general strike called by the hardline faction of the Hurriyat Conference as part of its “Quit Kashmir” programme.
The curfew was imposed in view of fresh killings on Friday and Saturday. Sixty-two persons, mostly teenaged boys, have been killed in police and security forces firing on protesters during the last two months in Kashmir.
DH News Service
