Kumar put the protestor death toll at 15, but a second officer, who asked to remain anonymous, said four more died on Sunday in clashes with security forces, raising the total number of deaths to 20.
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Violent protests erupted in Kashmir in the wake of the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen poster boy Wani on Friday in a joint operation by army and Jammu and Kashmir police.
He said most of the deaths had occurred on Saturday when mobs attacked police and other security installations in south Kashmir but all the deaths could not be accounted for as the situation did not allow the law enforcing agencies to gather information. Minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju said Pakistan “should worry about human rights violations in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir” since Kashmir is an “internal matter of India”.
More than 68,000 people have been killed in the uprising and the subsequent Indian military crackdown.
Around 300 people have been injured, including almost 100 police, and hospitals say they are overwhelmed.
All the doctors and the hospital staff spoke on the condition of anonymity as they said authorities directed them not to speak to reporters.
Meanwhile, medics in Srinagar warned that numerous injured Kashmiri youth could lose their eyesight from shotgun injuries.
Wani, in his early 20s, had become the iconic face of Kashmir’s freedom fighting, using social media to rally supporters and reach out to other youths like him who had grown up while hundreds of thousands of Indian armed forces have been deployed across the region.
Troops used live ammunition and pellet guns to try and quell the angry, rock-throwing crowds that gathered across the region in defiance of a curfew imposed by Indian authorities.
Five days after the killing of 21-year-old Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces, Hizbul Mujahideen on Tuesday appointed Mehmood Ghaznavi as the new commander of Kashmir.
Around 1,000 people have been injured, including almost 100 police, and hospitals say they are overwhelmed.
More than 70,000 Kashmiris have been killed so far in the violence, a lot of them by Indian forces.
More than 2000 pilgrims who were on the way back from the temple have been airlifted out of Kashmir, police officials told the BBC.
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The conflict dates to 1947, when India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain but disagreed on which country would get Kashmir.
