news details |
|
|
| Liquor trade on terror radar, other modes of entertainment likely to follow | | |
Early Times Report
JAMMU, Nov 16: Police and paramilitary forces have been asked to deal firmly with groups of militants who have been assigned the task of reviving pre-1990 days when extremists, backed by terrorists, launched an armed campaign against all forms of entertainment, including cinema theatres and liquor shops.
Government sources said that instructions to the security forces to upgrade the security grid to prevent militants from carrying out sustained attacks on liquor shops with the purpose of not only to hit tourist traffic but also to promote Islamic culture were issued following yesterday's incident of shooting near two liquor shops in posh Dalgate area of Srinagar in which one person was killed and three others injured.
Sources said that prior to 1990 militants attacked liquor shops and cinema halls which had forced all the nine theatres in the valley to shut and all the liquor shops to down their shutters. For over 15 years liquor shops, major liquor trade in the valley was in the hands of non-Muslims, remained closes and it was only after the 1996 Assembly poll that a couple of liquor shops opened in Srinagar.
Similarly one cinema hall had opened its gates in Srinagar after a gap of 18 years but the civilian strife of 2010,in which 120 people were killed in police firing, had forced the lone cinema theatre to close its gates. Sources said that though liquor trade in the valley was banned by the militants a section of people besides some tourists would get their quota from the bootleggers who used to smuggle liquor in their cars and in trucks.
A section of influential people would get their quota of liquor from the Defense canteens. A senior police officer said that forcible closure of liquor shops and cinema halls heralded armed struggle for securing liberation of Kashmir. He recalled that when groups of boys, some equipped with guns and grenades, stoned liquor shops and cinema halls they were heard shouting "pro-Azadi" slogans.
He said that in the past campaign against sale and consumption of liquor used to initiate by groups of boys who had been indoctrinated in Madrasas and later separatists and militants started taking the credit for it. He said that this time militants, who have sneaked into Kashmir from across tthe LOC in recent months, were behind the plan of forcing closure of liquor shops and cinema halls and cable network channels with the sole purpose of giving fresh lease of life to incidents of subversive violence.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
