By IANS,
Srinagar : Over a dozen protesters and security men were injured in clashes after Friday prayers in the old city areas of Jammu and Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar.
Agitated protesters indulged in heavy stone pelting at the police in the Nowhatta area of the city after Friday prayers, forcing the police and the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) to use batons and fire tear smoke shells to quell the mob.
The protesters dispersed but kept on regrouping from the densely populated lanes and bylanes of the area engaging the police in sporadic clashes.
The situation in the area was tense following eruption of fresh clashes in the old city area.
Earlier Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, chairman of the moderate Hurriyat group, alleged that the government was interfering with the religious rights of the local people.
Addressing a large congregation at the historic Jamia Mosque in the Nowhatta area, he asked the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to use its influence on India to stop the “interference.”
“The government should not push the people to resort to the same type of agitation Kashmir witnessed in August last year,” Mirwaiz Umer said.