The unrest was triggered by the July 8 killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani by security forces.
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The Union Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, on Thursday announced that the government would come up with an alternative to pellet guns within the next few days. Singh said an all-party delegation from New Delhi would visit the Valley soon and pellet guns would also be replaced with an alternative within a week.
The government has so far responded only by the use of force: imposing a 24-hour curfew now in its 48th day, rushing several thousand more soldiers from India, and using live fire and pellet guns (buckshot) on the protesters.
She also stressed on the fact that 95 percent of the people in the Valley wanted peace. She said these five per cent have made lives of 95 per cent, who want Kashmir’s solution through peaceful means, a hell.
In contrast, Mehbooba Mufti said five per cent of people in Kashmir were involved in the violence and they will be dealt with under the law. India’s future, he said, is intrinsically linked to the future of Kashmir.
Singh, with a combative Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti by his side, also addressed a press conference at her residence on Thursday afternoon.
“This youth died of (shotgun) pellet injuries”, Bhat told AFP.At least 14 other protesters were injured in the clashes, said a doctor at a leading hospital in the main city of Srinagar where they were taken for treatment. While terming the visit of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to Valley as “mockery”, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) on Wednesday asked why he landed in Kashmir when his forces were “killing, maiming and blinding civilians”.
Singh said that the fact that he was visiting the valley the second time in the span of just over a month should be seen as the government’s commitment to restore normalcy in the region. She had demanded the youth of Kashmir to abstain from becoming the target of propaganda being supported from across the border.
But Ms Mufti soon lost her cool, when asked by a journalist if she had swapped roles and views with her predecessor Omar Abdullah on protests.
“Whatever happened in 2010, there was a reason”. In 2010, there was a fake encounter.
Jammu and Kashmir Police have “not acted and the alleged troublemakers are roaming about free”, the source said, adding that the Chief Minister was being pressurized to crack down on them. “When we talk of engaging it is engaging with the members of civil society and stakeholders people living in Jammu, those living in Ladakh, members of displaced Kashmiri Pandits community, Sikh community. We want resolution”, she asserted.
Police says that the youth killed in security forces action during clashes in Pulwama district of south Kashmir.
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There seemed no end in sight to the unrest even as the Home Minister arrived here to meet a cross-section of Kashmiri people and seek ways on how to break the logjam. “Did young children go to buy toffee in army camps?”
