By Agence India Press
Srinagar: Life in the Kashmir Valley remained crippled while in some parts of the city on Thursday as authorities made heavy deployment of security forces to foil any protests against the death of a teenager in tear-gas shelling on Sunday.
Prohibitory orders are in force in the city where normal life remained hit for the fourth consecutive day today.
Fearing trouble during the prayers being held for the departed 13-year-old Wamik Farooq, police and paramilitary personnel have been deployed to thwart attempts by people to take out processions.
Residents claimed that police vans fitted with public address system went round the city this morning announcing imposition of curfew.
“We are not being allowed to move out of our houses as police van announced imposition of curfew from 7 am,” a resident of Rainawari Manzoor Ahmad Told Agence India Press over the telephonic conversation.
However, a police spokesman said curfew has not been imposed in any part of the city but prohibitory orders have been enforced strictly.
Markets were closed and traffic remained off the road. However, most parts in civil line area, except for Batmaloo, Maisuma, Basant Bagh and Gaw Kadal, the movement of people could be seen.
Farooq was hit by a teargas shell at Rajouri Kadal during a clash between police and locals. He later succumbed to injuries, triggering massive protests in the city and elsewhere in the valley.
As many as 300 people, including 54 police and paramilitary personnel, have been injured during clashes between stone-pelting youth and law enforcing agencies in the past three days.
Traffic was disturbed on the 300-km-long Srinagar-Jammu National Highway, in Kashmir valley, for several hours after pro freedom demonstrators blocked the road at Qazigund in south Kashmir.
Expressing solidarity with the people of Srinagar, where a youth was killed on Sunday in police tear gas shelling, people at Qazigund took to the streets this morning raising pro freedom slogans.
This was perhaps for the first time that people blocked traffic on the National highway the only road which connects Kashmir to the rest of India.
The demonstrators raising pro freedom slogans, burnt tyres on the main highway, leading to traffic jams on both sides of the road.
Even the demonstrators did not allow Army and security force convoys to pass.
It was only after about two hours; traffic was restored on the highway after police removed the burnt tyres and stones from the road.
Yesterday traffic was also disrupted for several hours on the highway from Chanapora to Nowgam because of stone pelting and demonstration.
Four Army personals were injured yesterday when demonstrators pelted stones on an army convoy at Bemina bypass.
However, today additional security force personnel had been deployed on either side of the highway to foil any stone pelting along the National Highway.