He said he called for observing the “black day” to express solidarity with “Kashmiris who are facing atrocities at the hands of Indian forces”.
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The authorities have also blocked cable TV network across Kashmir, a police official said.
The diktat was issued after police raided media houses and shut down a major printing press in what is being seen as the most sweeping information blackout in the valley rocked by violence.
“Editors of the two leading English language dailies Greater Kashmir and Rising Kashmir, namely Fayaz Ahmad Kaloo and Shujaat Bukhari, said that Police parties from Humhama Police Division of Budgam District Police raided their printing presses respectively at Rangreth and Humhama after last midnight”.
Journalists and editors protested in Srinagar after being told not to publish newspapers by authorities.
“The Policemen seized the metallic printing plates of Kashmir Times and printed copies of the newspaper and closed down the KT Press Pvt Ltd Printing Press”, the newspaper said.
However, government sources said the step has been taken to contain the violent protests that has left 39 persons dead and 3,160 injured in the clashes that erupted on July 9, a day after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed in an encounter with security forces.
“These are hard times here. This is one of the ways to contain the mayhem”, a senior local government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“The clamp-down was necessitated as Pakistani channels that are beamed here through cable television network have launched a campaign aimed at fomenting trouble here”, said a Jammu and Kashmir government minister who declined to be named.
The violence has shown no signs of subsiding as the protesters on Saturday attacked a police post in Kupwara district in which a civilian was killed. “And took away some 1,500 printed copies of an Urdu daily (that prints from the Kashmir Images press)”, Rasheed said.
Four injured, one reported to be critical, were brought to the main government hospital in Srinagar, the key city in the region, which has struggled to treat hundreds of wounded in clashes spread over almost a week.
New Delhi: More than 200 passengers of a London-Mumbai Air India flight who were stranded at Baku in Azerbaijan after their aircraft is diverted night for “operational reasons” returns to Mumbai in a special aircraft sent for them.
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Two civilians were also reportedly injured in the fresh incidents of violence in the area.
