Srinagar: At least four people were killed and about two dozen injured in Jammu and Kashmir’s Ramban district yesterday when security forces opened fire on protesters, police said. The incident led to tension in Srinagar and adjoining Pulwama, Shopian and Anantnag districts with protesters taking to streets.
As a precautionary measure, the government has imposed curfew in Srinagar and other major towns of the Valley from this morning. Internet services were suspended or slowed.
Condemning the incident as “unacceptable”, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah spoke to union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who ordered a probe and said use of excessive force or irresponsible action would be dealt with strictly, an official statement issued here said.
In a separate development, a cardiologist was critically injured and two police guards killed when militants attacked them in Pampore town in Pulwama district of the valley.
The four protesters were killed when guards fired at people storming a camp of the Border Security Force (BSF) in Shaida Gool village of Ramban district, 145km from Srinagar, police said.
The people were protesting alleged desecration of a mosque and beating up of an imam by BSF personnel.
Ten of the injured, five of them with critical bullet injuries, were airlifted by helicopters to hospitals in Jammu city, 180km away, for specialized treatment, police said.
A BSF trooper was injured in the incident. A BSF official told reporters in Jammu that a trooper had sustained a bullet injury after somebody from among the protesters fired at them, after which the guards at the camp opened fire at the protesters in self-defence.
The state government has ordered a magisterial enquiry while a high-level team including two ministers and the state police chief is camping at the spot. The district magistrate of Ramban has been shifted out.
Condemning the incident, Abdullah said it was “unfortunate that in spite of costly lessons learnt in 2008 and 2010, some amongst us are determined to repeat past mistakes and use force against unarmed protesters”.
“It is highly unacceptable to shoot at unarmed protesters just because they were reportedly protesting manhandling of an Imam of their area,” he said.
Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik was taken into preventive custody along with other supporters in Srinagar when they staged a protest in Maisuma area against the killings.
Clashes between security forces and stone-pelting protesters also broke out in Pulwama and Shopian towns in south Kashmir. Police used batons and fired in the air to disperse the protesters.
Protesters also burnt old tyres to block the Jammu-Srinagar highway at Batote, Ramban and Bannihal towns of Jammu
region.
Senior separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani has called for a three-day protest shutdown against the Gool killings.
Meanwhile, separatist guerrillas shot and seriously injured senior cardiologist Sheikh Jalal at his hometown Pampore.
Jalal, a former director of the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, was moving on the street along with his security guards when three guerrillas appeared and fired at them. The two guards died on the spot while Mir was taken to hospital.
IANS
