Internet services to remain suspended in Kashmir Valley during Eid

Srinagar: The Internet and other data services in Kashmir Valley will remain suspended for two days coinciding with Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Adha to discourage people from uploading ‘objectionable’ videos and pictures on and spreading rumours through social networking sites.

Inspector General of Police (Kashmir range), S.J.M.Gilani, in a letter written on Thursday to various service provides including the BSNL, Airtel, Aircel, Reliance, Vodafone and Idea HAS asked them to snap down data services through GPRS, Broadband, 2 G and 3G in Kashmir Valley for 41 hours from 5 am on August 25.

The letter reads “In view of the apprehension of misuse of data services by anti-national elements which is likely to cause deterioration in law and order situation, you are requested to completely snap down the data services through GPRS, 2 G, 3 G and Broadband in the Kashmir Valley starting from 0500 hours on August 25 to 2200 hours on August 26.”

Earlier this month, many people had taken to various social networking sites particularly Facebook and Twitter to protest against the Jammu and Kashmir High Court order asking the police to strictly enforce a 120-year-old ban on the slaughter of bovine animals and the sale of beef in the State. Some of the users uploaded videos and photographs of cows and other bovine animals being publicly slaughtered at places in predominantly Muslim Kashmir Valley during a separatist called shutdown against the court order. 

The authorities say their pastime tantamount to hurting religious sentiments of Hindus and, in fact, added to already existing tensions over the issue within and outside the State.

Various Kashmir-centric political parties and religious groups including separatists and an amalgam of clerics have asked people to violate the relevant provisions of the State’s own Ranbir Penal Code which declare slaughter of cow and other bovine animals and the sale of beef as punishable offence and the court order by sacrificing only bovine animals during this Bakar  Eid.

However, influential separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani has said that though God has declared the meat of bovine animals as halal (lawful) for Muslims and that neither can anyone declare it a forbidden entity nor stop them from consuming it, “we must not indulge in any such activity that could hurt the religious sentiments of any other community.”