1 killed as clashes erupt in J&K

Over 50 hurt in security forces’ action after 3 LeT men gunned down

At least one protester died in security forces’ action as parts of south Kashmir erupted on Thursday following the killing of three Lashkare-Tayabba (LeT) militants in a six-hour long gunbattle with the security forces.

Police sources and witnesses said that surging crowds mourning and protesting over the death of the militants clashed with the security forces at a number of places in Pulwama district, including in Kakapora where the encounter took place. Angry mobs also encircled the local police station, a camp of Army’s 50 Rashtriya Rifles and that of the J&K police’s counter-insurgency Operations Group in Special Kakapora and subsequently subjected these to heavy stone-pelting, the officials added.

The security forces fired teargas canisters and pellet shotguns and also used rubber bullets to quell stone-pelting mobs, critically injuring a youth identified as 22year-old Touseef Ahmed Wani. He was rushed to the sub-district hospital in the highway town of Pampore, where doctors declared him brought dead. The doctors said that he had received multiple pellet wounds in abdomen and head.

The police said Wani, nicknamed as Chota Geelani, was a “chronic stone-pelter” involved in 10 stone-pelting cases since 2010 and had been earlier booked twice under J&K’s stringent Public Safety Act (PSA). Justifying the action against the protesters, it said it was done “in order to save lives and government property”.

Intense clashes spread to several other Pulwama areas in the afternoon, leaving more than 50 people, including about a dozen security personnel, injured, reports said. A youth was injured when security forces opened fire on a violent mob in Pulwama’s Koil area, a report said.

Internet services in the south Kashmir areas were snapped on Wednesday evening immediately after the encounter had started “to prevent misuse of social media by anti-social elements”.