Srinagar: Â Protests started across Kashmir Velley as the news of Afzal Guru’s hanging spread across the valley. Eight people have been reported to be injured.
A group of protesters started marching in north Kashmir’s Doabgah village near Sopore town, the ancestral village of Afzal Guru, after they got news of his hanging.
Police sources said the protesters defied the curfew and attacked security forces with stones. The security forces used batons and tear gas to quell the protests. Warning shots were fired in the air.
In another incident, three protesters sustained injuries in Baramullah in clashes with security forces.Doctors in a Baramullah hospital told the media that two cases were referred to Srinagar.
The Hurriyat has called for four days of mourning. Mirwaiz Umer Farooq’s moderate Hurriyat group announced a four-day mourning on Afzal Guru’s hanging.
“We have announced four days of mourning on Afzal Guru’s hanging. We demand that his body be handed over to his family immediately,” Shahid-ul-Islam, secretary of the Mirwaiz, told IANS.
It called the hanging a “political killing which has nothing to do with the legal system of India”. “Afzal’s hanging has more to do with forthcoming elections than any legal process which he faced,” its statement said.
Senior hardline separatist leader and chairman of his Hurriyat group Syed Ali Geelani is also in Delhi. When IANS contacted Geelani’s secretary Ayaz Akbar on phone, it was informed that Akbar had been arrested. Sources close to Geelani said he had also announced a three-day mourning on Afzal Guru’s hanging.
Another senior separatist leader, Muhammad Nayeem Khan, was arrested Friday in connection with an FIR against him for issuing a provocative statement in 2010.