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Hundreds set fire to police post in Jammu
Hundreds of Hindu protesters set fire to a police post on Wednesday in Jammu city in Indian Kashmir, defying a curfew imposed to defuse protests over a land row with the region's Muslims.
- Agencies
- Published: 15:31 August 20, 2008
- Hindu protesters also set fire to a government apartment and vehicles in Jammu.
- Image Credit: AP
Jammu: Hundreds of Hindu protesters set fire to a police post on Wednesday in Jammu city in Indian Kashmir, defying a curfew imposed to defuse protests over a land row with the region's Muslims.
Hindu crowds also set fire to a government apartment in Jammu and hundreds marched to police stations and courted arrest as part of their movement to flood the region's jails in a civil disobedience campaign.
At least 25 people were injured in pitched battles between police and Hindu protesters late on Tuesday. Crowds burned a truck and damaged another half dozen vehicles in Jammu, Indian Kashmir's winter capital.
The land row pits Muslims in the Kashmir Valley against Hindus in Jammu, the two main regions that make up Jammu and Kashmir state.
The dispute and the weeks of protests that have followed have become one of the toughest challenges facing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government since it took office in 2004.
The crisis snowballed into massive protests this month, boosting separatists in Kashmir who want India's only Muslim-majority region to secede. Police have killed at least 22 Muslim protesters in Kashmir.
In Hindu-majority Jammu, 10 people have been killed in protests since the agitation began nearly two months ago, police said.
The dispute began after the state government promised to give forest land to a trust that runs Amarnath, a cave shrine visited by Hindu pilgrims.
Many Muslims were enraged. The government then rescinded its decision, which in turn angered Hindus in Jammu who attacked lorries carrying supplies to Kashmir Valley and blocked the region's highway, the only surface link with the rest of India.
Challenging the blockade, Kashmiris took to the streets in some of the biggest demonstrations in Kashmir since a revolt against Indian rule broke out in 1989.
With the Hindu trust extending the protest by another five days, authorities moved about 4,000 border guards to Jammu.
"The troops were recently withdrawn from counter-insurgency operations and kept (for) dealing with law and order problem," A.K. Sarolia, a senior border guard official, said.
The protests in Kashmir Valley have been suspended for the first time in almost two weeks to allow people to stock up on rations. The demonstrations by Muslims resume on Friday.
The Indian government is holding meetings with protest leaders from both sides to defuse the crisis.
On Wednesday, India's National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan travelled to Srinagar, Kashmir's Muslim-majority summer capital, to meet security officials.
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