Rakib Altaf
SRINAGAR: Curfew continues to remain in force in all major towns and cities of Kashmir valley to prevent violence, for the second day after Muhammad Afzal Guru was hanged at Delhi’s Tihar jail.
Police and paramilitary are deployed in strength and rolls of concertina wire block entry to roads and streets.
Internet through cellular networks remains barred and there are reports of cable operators having blocked national news channels.
Newspapers did not print for Sunday.
A leading daily has reported on its website that late last night “a police team arrived at the printing presses of most of the local newspapers and asked the managements not to publish the newspaper…Though no written orders were issued.”
Guru, convicted for plotting an attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, was hanged at 0800 hrs Saturday in cell no 3 of the prison. The President of India had rejected his petition for mercy.
Yesterday, after news of the execution spread, thousands of people gathered outside Guru’s residence at Doabgah near Sopore, 50 km north of the capital Srinagar and tried to march in a procession. There were protests in other parts of the valley also.
In Baramulla town, local residents said, the army fired their guns to stop a march by protesters.
A police spokesperson said that in total 36 people were wounded in clashes, adding that 23 among them were policemen – two of them officers.
The Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has asked police and paramilitary to exercise maximum restraint while dealing with the situation, he told reporters a short while after news of Guru’s hanging spread.
Authorities fear protests could snowball into a major uprising and repeat the summer 2010, when a teenager died after he was hit by a teargas shell. The death led to a series of protests in which 111 people – mostly young men and children – were killed due to police or paramilitary firing on protesters.
Not Informed
Afzal Guru is the second Kashmiri after the JKLF founder Mohammad Maqbool Butt to be hanged. His hanging comes barely two days ahead of Butt’s 29th death anniversary, which is observed as the “Martyr’s Day” in the valley.
Butt later became a rallying figure for the separatist movement in Kashmir, where an armed conflict has killed tens of thousands of people.
Many see Guru’s hanging as a political decision to blunt the BJP’s opposition ahead of the general elections due next year.
The Indian government was under immense pressure from the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party to hang him.
A prominent Indian lawyer, Kamini Jaiswal has strongly criticised the Indian government for not allowing Guru to see his family before going to the gallows.
We have done it in a manner as if we were a “blood thirsty” nation, she told NDTV.
Guru’s wife has now written to the authorities of Delhi’s Tihar jail to allow them to perform his last rites in accordance with Islamic traditions.
The letter written by Guru’s lawyer on her behalf says the family came to know about the execution only from television channels.
However India’s home secretary RK Singh said the family had been informed by registered post about the President rejecting Guru’s mercy petition.
