Anti-Israel stir: 17 freed in J&K
Kashmiri graffiti artist Mudasir Gul who was arrested by the police on Friday for painting the face of a sobbing woman wearing the Palestine flag as the headscarf and writing ‘We are Palestine’ on a steel platform next to an overhead water tank in Srinagar’s Padshahi Bagh was released on Sunday.
The artist’s arrest had drawn flak from various political parties and also evoked widespread anger on social media.
The officials said that 17 other Srinagar boys who were arrested by the police for participating in anti-Israel protests on Friday in violation of restrictions in force in the summer capital as part of the ‘corona curfew’ clamped in entire J&K in the last week of April to contain the surge of the deadly virus too have been handed over to their parents after “proper counselling”.
The police said, “During the counselling, family members of the boys were advised to take proper care of their wards and keep a watch upon their activities, actions and behaviour.”
The witnesses had said that 32-year-old Gul drew the graffiti amid chanting of anti-Israel slogans by an impromptu crowd and subsequently some angry youth put several Palestine flags atop the platform crisscrossing a passageway. Local sources had said that it was a group of youth of Padshahi Bagh who “feeling disturbed and highly passionate over the mayhem caused by the Israeli forces in Gaza Strip” had persuaded Gul to draw the graffiti.
However, later in the evening, the police visited Gul’s home and, his elder brother Badr-ul-Islami was quoted by kashmirwalla.com portal saying that they forced him to deface the graffiti by spreading patches of black paint over it and then took him along.
The police overnight also raided several homes in Padshahi Bagh and arrested several local youth who had reportedly participated in the antiIsrael protest. Gul on Sunday afternoon returned to a warm welcome in his locality after the release.
The J&K police early Saturday also detained a Muslim cleric Sarjan Barkati from southern district.