SRINAGAR, Feb 6 (2007) – A strike called by separatists in Indian Kashmir over allegations civilians were killed in staged gun battles with security forces closed much of the region’s main city on Tuesday, witnesses said.
Hundreds of people, led by veiled women, marched through the streets of Srinagar as the strike — called by the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) — closed shops and businesses.
Over the weekend, authorities arrested four policemen, including two senior officers, accused of killing three people in the Ganderbal area outside Srinagar and passing them off as militants fighting New Delhi’s rule.
“Peace process and killing of innocent Kashmiris cannot go together,” JKLF chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik said.
On Monday, officials said both the army and police had begun investigations in the deaths of three men.
Malik, along with dozens of activists, began a three-day fast near the front’s office in the heart of Srinagar.
India and Pakistan claim the disputed Kashmir region in full but rule it in parts. They began the latest peace moves in 2004.
“Nobody, of whatsoever position or rank he may be, would be spared if found guilty of innocent killings and deliberate human rights violations,” Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said.
Police say they have so far exhumed five bodies as part of their investigation into the Ganderbal killings.
New York based Human Rights Watch groups has called for an end to “fake encounters” in Kashmir.
“This epidemic of fake ‘encounter killings’ by the security forces has plagued Kashmir for too long,” Brad Adams, the group’s Asia director, said last week.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in a revolt against Indian rule in the Himalayan region since 1989, officials say. Human rights groups put the toll at about 60,000 dead or missing.
