Security personnel stand guard along a deserted street during restrictions in Srinagar yesterday.
Agencies
Srinagar
Authorities yesterday ordered a curfew in parts of Kashmir after hundreds of separatist activists were arrested on the eve of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the region.
In the main city of Srinagar shops and schools remained shut, university exams were cancelled for the day and public transport was suspended as hundreds of police and paramilitary forces patrolled the streets.
Modi is scheduled to address a public rally in Srinagar today, where he is expected to announce economic assistance, more than a year after massive flooding inflicted $16bn worth of damage across the territory.
“Restrictions were imposed to prevent breach of peace before the prime minister’s rally,” a senior police officer said on condition of anonymity.
Nearly 300 activists have been arrested to prevent them from mobilising, another police officer said.
Security has been beefed up ahead of Modi’s visit, with the region already tense following incidents of religious intolerance and attacks on minorities in many parts of the country.
“I was not allowed to go to work because of the soldiers on the street outside my home,” Waheed Ahmed, a mason living in the old city area of Srinagar said.
After Modi’s rally was announced earlier in the week, police detained all top separatist leaders or confined them to their homes, local media reports said.
Authorities denied permission for a counter-rally, dubbed Million March, called by separatist groups today to press their demands for self-determination and freedom from Indian rule.
Some separatist leaders remained defiant, however.
“Our Million March will go ahead come what may,” Syed Ali Geelani, the senior most separatist leader who called for the counter-rally said in a statement Thursday.
