SRINAGAR: Authorities in Kashmir have warned people that the indefinite curfew imposed on Saturday last will be enforced very strictly on Friday.
Police vans fitted with loudspeakers went round the city late on Thursday evening, asking people not to venture out of their homes.
This has been done in view of the proposed march to the “Martyr’s Graveyard” at Eidgah in Srinagar on Friday.
Kashmir’s octogenarian separatist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani has asked people to converge at Eidgah to offer prayers in absentia for Muhammad Afzal guru, who was hanged in Delhi’s Tihar jail on Saturday morning.
The indefinite curfew had been relaxed for varying periods of time in different parts of the valley on Wednesday and Thursday.
Three youth have died and dozens wounded in clashes with police and paramilitaries across the valley since the hanging of Guru.
Police have used live cartridges besides rubber bullets to quell protest demonstrations. Many victims have been hit above the waist.
Authorities are worried about the Friday’s proposed march: Such marches have attracted as many as half a million people in the recent past.
The late Guru has been buried in Tihar jail alongside the tall separatist leader and JKLF founder, Muhammad Maqbool Bhat who was hanged twenty nine years ago.
His family has demanded that the body be returned for burial in the valley.
People have reserved a grave for Guru at the Martyr’s cemetery alongside the one reserved for Maqbool Bhat.
The epitaph describes him as ‘martyr of the homeland’. It reads that “the people of Kashmir are waiting for his body to be buried here”.
