Daily Times

SRINAGAR: Amid simmering tensions, a youth was shot dead by Indian forces in Srinagar city late on Saturday.

According to local police, Sajad Hussain was shot dead in SD Colony area of Srinagar’s Batmaloo locality, allegedly by India’s Border Security Force (BSF). “He was shot in the head and died on spot. Another youth is injured and he has been rushed to a hospital,” witnesses said. The details of the incident are sketchy, but witnesses and reports quoted in the local media said the youth was passing through the locality when he was shot. According to reports, a cricket match was going on in the area around the time the incident took place.

In a strange twist to the killing, the police spokesperson said there was no deployment of forces in the area when the incident happened. Some reports suggest a convoy of BSF was passing through the area on which some youth allegedly threw stones.

Witnesses said forces opened fire at the passers-by resulting in the killing. “We are collecting details and looking into the circumstances under which a person identified as Sajad Hussain Sheikh of Chandoosa Baramulla, at present SD Colony Srinagar, got killed,” the police spokesperson said. A pall of gloom descended on the tense Srinagar city after the news of the youth’s killing spread. Shopkeepers downed their shutters very early as more people started gathering at the scene of the killing. Anti-India and pro-freedom sloganeering was going on in the area when this report was filed.

Kashmir has been swept by a wave of violence in recent months with forces killing eight civilians and injuring more than 150 on April 9, the day of by-polls for Srinagar parliamentary constituency. India’s Election Commission then deferred another by-election in the Anantnag constituency.

Meanwhile, students of a government college in south Kashmir’s Pulwama were tear-gassed and attacked with shotgun pellets by forces after they reportedly protested against their presence near the campus on Saturday. More than 50 students, including girl students, suffered injuries as the forces came down heavily on the protesters who were throwing stones at them. Police, however, said they came under a stone-attack near the college, forcing them to resort to severe measures to control the protests. A day after a video showed a young man from the valley tied to the bonnet of an Indian Army jeep as a human shield against stone pelters, at least two videos circulating on social media Saturday showed Indian security forces brutally torturing the Kashmiri youth.

One of the videos, shared by Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on his Twitter account, shows four Indian troops holding down a youth with their boots and using sticks to beat him. Farooq claimed the video was made today in the area of Pulwama, a hotbed of unrest in the held valley. Initially, two Indian soldiers are seen forcing the Kashmiri youth to the ground and straightening his legs. One soldier stands on the legs while the other starts hitting him repeatedly with a stick, making him scream in pain.

When the young man tries to get up, two more soldiers appear and grab his hair, forcing him back down, with a trooper putting his foot on the youth’s upper back while the other soldier resumes his brutal beating. Another video, also shared by Farooq, shows six Kashmiri youth, held in an Indian security forces vehicle, forced to chant slogans against Pakistan by Indian troops. The young men are being repeatedly struck and abused by the security troops, who demand they shout anti-Pakistan slogans on cue.

“Azadi chahye? [Do you still want freedom?]” an Indian troop can be heard asking one youth, who is being repeatedly hit and is bleeding from his head.