SRINAGAR: Breakdown of police and administrative machinery continued on the 60th day of turmoil, following Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani’s killing on July 8, death toll in Kashmir valley has reached 75 as a youth was killed and 60 others injured in fresh clashes between protesters and security forces in Anantnag district of South Kashmir on Tuesday.
Informed sources said that the residents of Seer Hamadan, Anantnag, failed a post-midnight crackdown of police and security forces on some ‘stone pelters’ with announcements on public address system at different mosques asking people to come out of their houses and force the Army withdraw.
Intense clashes took place between the protesters and Police/CRPF in which a number of civilians sustained injuries. Police failed to arrest three particular youths reportedly involved in some incidents of stone pelting.
In the forenoon, police and security forces returned to the village, on Anantnag-Pahalgam Road, and thrashed a number of persons. As the angry crowds of over a thousand clashed with police and security forces amid pro-Pakistan slogans, sources said that as many as 60 people sustained minor injuries—three of them critically. A 20-year-old local youth, Naseer Ahmad Bhat, son of Ghulam Hassan Bhat faced the brunt of the firing from a pellet gun and later died at District Hospital Anantnag. He had lately completed graduation.
Sources said that a 37-year-old woman, Jameela, was among the injured who were rushed to SKIMS. Doctors later said that she was stable. Deputy Commissioner of Anantnag, Dr Syed Abid Rashid, maintained that some people clashed with the police and failed their crackdown. “Unfortunately, a local graduate boy was hit by pellets and he died”, DC Anantnag told STATE TIMES.
Naseer Ahmad Ganai is the 75th person to die in the Police/CRPF firing in the last 60 days of Kashmir turbulence.
Residents alleged that the Police and CRPF went berserk and ransacked houses before lifting three persons from