By IANS,
Srinagar : At least 50 people were injured in violent protests that brought normal life to a standstill in this Jammu and Kashmir summer capital Wednesday as the body of a missing youth who was found murdered was buried.
Police sources here said in all 50 people, including five policemen and six troopers, were injured in the daylong clashes between protesting mobs on one side and police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel on the other. The condition of three injured civilians is stated to be critical.
Police said security forces had to use teargas and resort to baton charge in uptown and old city areas to control protesters.
Loud bursts of teargas shells and warning shots could be heard in this city for most part of the day.
Mobs comprised angry youth who took to streets after the body of Asrar Ahmad Dar, a 20-year-old undergraduate student who had gone missing a week ago, was found in Kathidarwaza locality of the city.
Police said the youth had been apparently murdered with a “sharp edged weapon” as his body bore many injury marks.
City police chief Afadul Mujtaba said earlier in the day that Dar was abducted by unidentified people and “murdered”.
“Only a forensic report would tell us about the cause of death but it appears that he has been killed with some sharp edged weapon,” Mujtaba said.
Mystery shrouds the identity of the attackers but locals alleged police and other security agencies picked him up and killed him in custody.
Police handed over the body to his relatives after an autopsy Wednesday afternoon. As the body was being taken for burial, the youth accompanying the funeral procession indulged in violence and stoned passing vehicles.
They smashed window panes of government buildings and tore down the hoardings, besides pelting stones at some shops and restaurants on the way to the graveyard at Dalgate.
Police had a difficult time in controlling the mobs during the funeral.
Mobs continued to clash with police and CRPF personnel in Maisuma locality, to which the youth belonged, and other localities till late in the evening.
Wednesday’s violence followed similar agitations over the rape and murder of two women in a south Kashmir village in Shopian region in May and the killing of four protesters in alleged police firing in north Kashmir’s Baramulla and Sopore towns last month.