12 injured in new clashes, parts of Srinagar shut

Srinagar: Over a dozen people were injured, one of them seriously, in fresh street clashes in Kashmir even as curfew-like restrictions were in force in summer capital Srinagar and some other parts of the Valley on Monday.

Tensions run high and residents are seething with anger over the killing of two students in the firing by security forces on protesters in southern district of Pulwama on Sunday.

Clashes broke out between curfew-defying crowds and the police in Kakapora area of Pulwama, 28-km south of here, on Monday, reports said.

Three protesters were injured. One of them — Muhammad Yusuf Mir — was seriously wounded after being hit by teargas canisters fired by the police to quell stone-throwing mobs, witnesses and hospital sources said. A mob also targeted a police post in the area, prompting cops to use force, reports said.

Violent protests also broke out in parts of summer capital Srinagar. Groups of youth took to streets in defiance of restrictions and burned used tyres to vent their anger. Several policemen also sustained injures in the clashes, officials said.

A report from southern Anantnag said that a Class 12 student, Ozair Ahmed Bhat, has been operated upon in a local hospital after he was allegedly beaten up mercilessly and then pushed down from the first floor of a tuition centre by CRPF jawans, causing severe injuries to him. Witnesses said that the CRPF men forced their entry into the tuition centre after they came under stone-pelting by a group of youth.

In Sunday’s shooting and teargas shelling, two persons were killed and 10 others injured.

The police said one of the victims Shaista Hameed was hit by a bullet while being evacuated from the area after fighting broke out between militants and security forces and that the other slain youth Danish Farooq Mir was hit by a teargas canister fired by the police to quell a stone-throwing mob.

But residents refuted the police claim and alleged that 22-year-old Shaista received fatal bullet injuries while sitting on the porch of her house and that Mir too was not part of the protest but playing cricket in a nearby ground when hit by a bullet.

Doctors who attended on him also contradicted the police version and said that Mir, an engineering student, had received a bullet wound in the back of his neck and that most of the other injured civilians had been fired above the waist.