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| Batmaloo stone pelters go underground after Police crackdown | | Shafeeq Sheikh’s killer hiding in Kupwara | |
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, May 5: Even as nearly twenty of the youth, widely known for their indulgence in incidents of stone pelting in Batmaloo area of this capital city, have gone underground after Police have launched a crackdown last week, killer of the middle aged civilian, Shafeeq Sheikh of Nattipora, is believed to be hiding somewhere in Kupwara township in north Kashmir. A junior employee of Jammu & Kashmir State Board of School Education, Sheikh had died here on Friday last when an unruly group of youngsters crushed his head with a weighty stone in his bus.
Highly placed authoritative sources revealed to Early Times that with the help of the residents of Batmaloo, Police had succeeded in identifying four to six of the youth who had intercepted a minibus at 0830 hours on April 30th and caused the death of 45-year-old Shafeeq Sheikh by crushing his head with a stone thrown on the vehicle from a distance of less than five yards. According to these sources, two of the main stone pelters, who operated from the front, had been identified as Suhail Ahmed Dar alias Tangul S/o Mohammad Akbar Dar R/o Gausiya Colony, Bemina, and Umar Irshad Ahangar alias Chhayan S/o Irshad Ahangar R/o Dyarwani, Batmaloo.
Sources said that all twenty of the stone pelters, who have been indulging in this activity in Batmaloo area since 2008, had gone underground immediately after Police launched a crackdown to arrest Sheikh’s killers. Tracking the movement of the main accused through mobile phone towers of Airtel, Police observed that Umar Irshad Ahangar had switched off his phone in Nundrishi Colony and was believed to be hiding in a Srinagar locality. Suhail Ahmed Dar, who according to Police sources and some eyewitnesses threw the stone, had traveled on Srinagar-Baramulla highway and stayed for some time in Pattan. In the afternoon today, his cellphone signals detected him in Ganai Colony of Kupwara township.
Officials were hopeful of Suhail’s arrest till late tonight, though presence of over 300 youth of Srinagar, Baramulla and Anantnag districts in connection with Army’s recruitment programme at district headquarters of Kupwara was feared to be an interruption.
On Friday last, when hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani had called for an afternoon march to Srinagar headquarters of United Nations Military Observer Group on India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), a group of six to eight youth had reportedly disrupted vehicular traffic in Batmaloo at 0830 hours. Geelani had called upon his pro-Azadi supporters neither to throw stones nor observe any shutdown on that day. While hooting on drivers and pelting stones on some of the vehicles in movement, these people reportedly threw a weighty stone on a minibus, killing one of the commuters almost on the spot. Sheikh breathed his last before reaching Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences for treatment. Earlier, a similar group of hooligans had caused the death of an eleven-day-old infant in the lap of his mother in Baramulla on February 22.
Positioning himself at the receiving end of the opposition’s onslaught for over a year, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah directly held Hurriyat Conference (G) Chairman, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, responsible for Sheikh’s murder at the hands of stone pelting groups inspired and indoctrinated by the hardline separatist leader. Sheikh’s death also forced the ideologically paralyzed National Conference to hold its maiden rally against the menace of stone pelting that was being justified by a number of the Valley’s politicians and intellectuals as “our only tool of resistance”.
Over 1,500 Kashmiris are estimated to have sustained injuries in hundreds of incidents of stone pelting and resultant retaliation from Police and paramilitary forces in Kashmir valley in the last two years. Hundreds of vehicles, including more than 100 ambulances and vehicles of the hospital staff, are estimated to have been damaged in these incidents of violence. |
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