Simmering tensions in Kashmir as Indian army kills two teens

NEW DELHI // Kashmiri separatist leaders called for a shutdown of the Kashmir Valley on Wednesday after two teenagers were shot dead by the army in Badgam district on Monday evening.

In response, Indian security forces placed restrictions on civilian movement in the towns around where the incident occurred. Elsewhere, one prominent separatist leader, Yasin Malik, was placed in preventive detention, while another, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, was put under house arrest.

The Kashmir Valley remained tense all day, and sporadic clashes between protesters and police broke out in Badgam, injuring two policemen.

“Employees, lawyers, members of civil society, traders, transporters and others should raise a protest against the … killing of unarmed youth,” Mr Farooq, the chairman of the Hurriyat alliance of political parties and religious organisations, said on Tuesday.

Mr Malik called the shooting “another glaring example of the Indian army’s brutal face”.

The two teenagers, Faisal Yusuf Bhat, 14, and Mehrajuddin Dar, 18, were killed when soldiers opened fire on the car they were travelling in with two other youths on Monday, on a road 20 kilometres outside Srinagar.

The army had set up checkpoints in the area, searching cars and frisking passengers, because it had received intelligence that militants would be travelling on that road.

The car’s occupants were returning from watching a Muharram procession in the town of Chattargam.

The army said the car did not stop at a first and then a second checkpoint. “At the third checkpoint, the vehicle tried to break through the checkpoint, resulting in a firing incident,” an army said.

All four occupants of the car were injured and rushed to hospital, where two of them died. The police confirmed, after the incident, that none of the four young men had any links to militant groups.

The Hindu newspaper reported on Wednesday that the car was driving fast because it had sideswiped a lorry earlier, and the young men had been worried that the lorry driver would catch up with them.

In the town of Nowgam, where the slain youths lived, clashes between residents and security forces broke out on Tuesday. The protesters threw stones at police vehicles and personnel, who fired tear gas to disperse the crowds. A curfew was imposed in the area.

The incident has drawn fierce criticism from political leaders, coming as it has on the heels of massive floods that devastated the region.

“Such killings have no place in an otherwise improving security environment where militancy incidents are at record low levels,” Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, said on Twitter. “These deaths have served to vitiate [an] atmosphere already strained by the post-flood reconstruction challenge that people face.”

The army said it had “moved with unprecedented speed to initiate investigations” and that it had “promised that justice will be done”.

In such situations, the army is protected by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which gives soldiers in “disturbed areas” extraordinary licence in operations and legal immunity. It has been in force in Kashmir since 1990, and it has protected soldiers from being tried for killing civilians suspected of militancy.

A retired army officer who had served in Kashmir and asked not to be identified, told The National that a number of questions might have run through the minds of the soldiers at the checkpoint. “Are they only young men? Is their behaviour suspicious?” Even if the passengers were not seen to be carrying weapons, “it could also be a car bomb”, he said.

At checkpoints, he said, the mood was invariably jittery. “If every car is stopping at a checkpoint and one doesn’t, then of course it can trigger an immediate reaction,” he said.

“The mindset is of safety first. You don’t want to be one who let the terrorists in. You don’t want to take chances.”

Many critics of the soldiers’ reaction – including Mr Abdullah – have asked why they could not have stopped the car by shooting at its tyres, but the retired officer said this was not easy to do.

“This is going to be controversial, but the army shoots to kill,” he said. “It has been trained to do so. And shooting at tyres happens in movies, rarely in real life. It is not that easy to hit a moving target.”

ssubramanian@thenational.ae