Army uses amplifiers to blare patriotic songs in J&K's Tral

Srinagar: As loudspeakers installed at mosques and other places of worship across restive Kashmir continued to blare pro-freedom slogans, rebellious songs and music, it has emerged that security forces at places have chosen to pay back in own coin.

According to a reports, amplifiers installed inside an Army garrison along barricaded Shikargah road on the outskirts of southern Tral town on Tuesday afternoon, reverberated with ‘desh premi’ or patriotic songs such as ‘Aye mere watan ke logon’ the highly acclaimed song written by Kavi Pradeep and sung by Lata Mangeshkar.

Soon the mosque loudspeakers in retaliation began broadcasting Pakistan’s national anthem and pro-aazadi slogans and music in the high-pitch volume, the report said.

Tral, 42-km from Srinagar, is the home town of Burhan Muzaffar Wani, the 22-year-old Internet savvy poster boy of Kashmiri militancy, whose killing by security forces on July 8 sparked off a new wave of unrest in the Valley leaving 51 protesters and two policemen dead and over 7,000 people including  security personnel injured, so far.

A local resident who wished not to be named told this newspaper over the phone that patriotic songs and music are being broadcast through amplifiers by security forces from some of their camps including the one of the CRPF situated in the main town. “They do it occasionally only and ostensibly to counter mosque loudspeakers continuing to relay pro-freedom slogans and rebellious songs,” he said. A local reporter Fayyaz Ahmed added that he heard these being relayed also before the muezzins called for Fajr or dawn prayers on Thursday.

He said that slogans coined and songs composed recently to glorify Wani and his comrades in the Hizb-ul-Mujahedin and other militant outfits are also being broadcast through these loudspeakers routinely.

Army sources here said that they have no knowledge about ‘desh premi’ songs being broadcast through amplifiers at its camps in the Valley including Tral.

In a throwback to the heyday of militancy in 1990s, the mosque loud-speakers have reverberated with pro-aazadi slogans across the Kashmir Valley during the ongoing turbulence. At places, police raided the places of worship to confiscate the public address system installed at these but it failed to deter the residents, mainly youth, to use the equipment at other mosques and shrines for the pastime.