J& KCMwarns against use of ‘ excessive’ force
As complaints about security forces inflicting “terrible atrocities” on innocent local people continued to rise on the sixth day of violence in Jammu and Kashmir, chief minister Mehbooba Mufti warned them against “excessive” use of force.
Ms Mufti, while seeking people’s support in pulling J& K out of the “vortex of violence and bloodshed,” said on Wednesday that “if there have been any incidents during which excessive force was used I will make them answerable”. She reiterated that instructions have been issued to the security forces to exercise restraint while dealing with the situation.
Ms Mufti had on Tuesday as well, in a televised message on the eve of Martyrs’ Day, urged people to cooperate with the state government, while assuring that action would be taken against the security forces for using “excessive force”.
The death toll in Jammu and Kashmir rose to 35 on | | Wednesday, the sixth day of mayhem with more incidents of stone pelting and firing being reported. Hurriyat leaders Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Shah Geelani were arrested and then released for trying to defy curfew orders and offer prayers for the martyrs who died in 1931 while fighting to free Kashmir from the Dogra rulers.
On Wednesday morning, Ms Mufti, who said her heart was overwhelmed with great sadness as a result of the killings, sought the services of eye surgeons in Delhi for treating patients in danger of losing their eyesight. “A specialised team of surgeons from New Delhi and other parts of the country is being rushed to Kashmir to take care of the people injured and needing superspecialty care,” an official spokesman in Srinagar said after Ms Mufti spoke with Union health minister J. P. Nadda, requesting him to send specialist doctors, including retina surgeons.
Over 150 persons,
Continued from Page 1 including young boys and girls in the 5- 10 age group, have suffered eye injuries, mainly in pellet gun firings. Ophthalmologists have conducted 97 eye surgeries during the past five days at Srinagar’s governmentrun Sri Maharaj Hari Singh ( SMHS) hospital alone. A total of 111 patients with eye injuries were admitted in this hospital since July 9 and 47 of them have been sent home after successful surgeries. However, the condition of 22 to 30 victims is said to be “bad” and doctors are trying hard to help them gain their visual recovery.
“We’re doing our best, but I’m sorry to say that five of them have already lost their vision and there is no chance of any recovery,” said a senior ophthalmologist at the SMHS who wished to remain anonymous.
The Valley has been on the boil since Friday last when Burhan Muzaffar Wani, the 22- year- old newage “poster boy” for militancy and a heartthrob of defiant youth, was killed reportedly in an encounter in southern Anantnag. The news was received with dismay and soon streets filled with crowds of mourners, many of them seething with rage.
At places “Intifada”, as the now almost routine ding- dong stone pelting battles between protesting Kashmiri youth and security forces are referred to locally, followed. These have been taking place at the slightest provocation and the security forces have been responding by using force. Thirty- three protesters have died of bullet wounds, and over 1,500 injured, of whom more than 400 received bullet and pellet wounds above their waists, suggesting that the security forces opened fire to kill.
The police and CRPF authorities have said that they were “compelled” to use force, and, in fact, in many cases they exercised restraint in spite of severe provocation and being caught in life- threatening situations. They said more than 150 security personnel had been injured in mob attacks and stone- pelting incidents and recalled how a police driver, Afroz Ahmed, was, on July 10, pushed into Jhelum at Sangam outside Srinagar by a mob, resulting in his instant death. Several police stations and posts, camps of security forces and other infrastructure have been damaged by irate crowds.
But there have been reports of the men in khaki going berserk and turning their wrath on even those residents who were not part of any protests. Homes have been ransacked, inmates thrashed, cars and other private properties damaged. Even ambulances, while transporting the injured, were attacked and teargas canisters fired into hospital premises, including the SMHS hospital. A medical facility in the remote Lolab area of frontier Kupwara district and a nearby pharmacy were ransacked and staff roughed up by security forces who were allegedly “angry” that injured protesters were being treated.
The height of anger against the security forces, particularly the J& K police and CRPF, has led to enraged mobs attacking even the families of local policemen. One such attack took place at Chadrigam in the Tral area of southern Pulwama on Tuesday when a mob allegedly barged into the house of a police official, Muhammad Ashraf, and beat up his wife and daughter.
Though superintendent of police, Awantipora, tried to play the incident down, saying only the windowpanes of the house were damaged, this is the first time in Jammu and Kashmir’s turbulent history that the families or property of policemen have come under mob attack.
The thrashing of the mother- daughter evoked condemnation in the Valley and beyond, with many people taking to social networking sites to voice their disapproval.