Trouble erupts in Valley areas

Srinagar: Irate crowds of youths fought pitched ding-dong battles with the security forces in the Telbal area on the outskirts of Srinagar throughout Tuesday night, leaving several people injured. Clashes took place at two other places in the Valley at least, which resulted in injuries to two more persons.

Witnesses said on Wednesday that the trouble began in the Telbal area when the J&K police, assisted by the Central armed police forces, arrived in the area to make arrests. The local residents resisted it, triggering the clashes. The security forces fired teargas canisters and reportedly also fired from rifles over the heads of the stone-pelting mobs. As the clashes were on, some locals used mosque loudspeakers to broadcast pro-freedom slogans, the witnesses said.

Two more persons were injured when the security forces fired pellet shotguns to disperse the protesters and stone-pelting mobs in Srinagar’s Fatah Kadal and southern Anantnag early Wednesday, police sources said.

DIG V.K. Birdi, when asked about these incidents at the daily press briefing, said they were minor ones. He said: “In a few pockets of the Valley, there were stray incidents of stone-pelting. Otherwise, the rest of the area behaved normally.” He said the situation is being monitored closely and “decisions on the maintenance of law and order are being taken accordingly”.

On Telbal, he said: “There was some law and order incident there. We dealt with it as per the law. We will let you know about the rest of it.”

He said the overall situation in the Valley remained peaceful and in areas where relaxation in restrictions imposed under Section 144CrPc on August 5 was given on Wednesday had “behaved normally”.

Official spokesman Syed Sehrish Asgar said the Jammu division was also peaceful on Wednesday. “No law and order situation in the Jammu region has been reported. There were almost no restrictions in any district of the region,” he said.

The J&K education director said that after the primary schools, middle schools were also reopened in the Valley. He said 10 to 20 per cent of students, mainly in the southern and northern parts of the Valley, had turned up at 774 middle-level schools which were reopened on Wednesday. He said 3,000 middle schools had started working again in the areas where the restrictions had already been lifted.

When told that schools in Srinagar district were either closed or no students were present there Wednesday, he said: “We have 204 primnary schools in Srinagar. Today, we have opened also 87 schools at the middle level. There is improvement in the attendance of staff, although the students’ attendance is thin.”