By IANS,
Srinagar : Wednesday’s blast at the Delhi High Court have revived memories of similar tragedies in Jammu and Kashmir, with a cross-section of people here expressing equal condemnation and disgust.
While mainstream and hardline politicians have reacted on expected lines, condemning the act as inhuman and dastardly, the common man is stunned to see violence being perpetrated to make a political point.
“How can anyone seek mercy for someone by targeting 12 innocent people who were attending court to seek justice for themselves?” senior bank official Manzoor Ahmad said.
“We have been suffering violence for over 20 years now,” college principal Muzaffar Ahmad told IANS. “It has led us from one tragedy to another. Television images of the blast victims looked exactly like the ones we have seen in Kashmir. Violence and suffering have just one face and its victims are universally bound by their common tragedy.”
There is widespread sympathy for the victims and a wave of anger against the perpetrators of the blast .
“There is no way anybody can seek justice and mercy by behaving like a mindless maniac,” religious preacher Nisar Ahmad, 45, said. “Islam does not permit the killing of innocent people. In fact, Islam does not permit killings of any sort except during a war declared under Islamic tenets. This is a mindless, mad and despicable massacre.”
State chief minister Omar Abdullah, patron of opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, JKLF chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik and other politicians have also expressed shock.