Curfew in Kashmir after death of militant

Thousands of police and troops enforced a lockdown yesterday in parts of Kashmir, fearing violent reprisals a day after a top militant commander and two civilians were killed in clashes.Residents in the old quarters of Srinagar were ordered to stay indoors and obey the curfew as government forces patrolled streets lined with steel barriers and razor wire.“I was not allowed by soldiers to leave home for work. They are right outside my door,” Gulzar Ahmed, a mechanic, said from his house in downtown Srinagar.Schools and colleges were ordered shut for a second day to try to avert student protests, which frequently erupt into stone-throwing and clashes with troops.Shops and banks also remained shut after three top Kashmiri separatist leaders called for a strike following the death of Abu Dujana, a senior rebel fighter from militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).His death, heralded by Indian forces as “a major achievement”, sparked protests and clashes with government forces across the Kashmir Valley during which a young man was killed and scores injured.A second protester died in hospital yesterday.His funeral was attended by hundreds of mourners who pelted soldiers with stones and chanted slogans calling for independence, witnesses said.Dujana’s death has dealt one of the biggest blows to Kashmiri separatists since a charismatic young commander, Burhan Wani, was shot dead in July last year.Wani’s killing sparked months of widespread protests against Indian rule and left nearly 100 civilians dead and thousands injured.Since then protesters - sometimes entire villages - have increasingly taken to the streets, hurling stones at soldiers to help militants evade capture or death.Meanwhile, the Jammu and Kashmir police yesterday told the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi to claim Dujana’s body.“If they don’t claim his body, we will give him a proper burial,” Inspector General of Police Munir Khan said.Police refused to hand over Dujana’s body to civilians for burial.Khan said “there was no reason to hand over the body of somebody to locals who did not belong to the Kashmir Valley”.In other developments, a New Delhi court extended by a day the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) custody of separatist leader Shabir Shah, arrested on charges of money laundering.Additional Sessions Judge Rakesh Pandit allowed the agency to quiz Shah for one more day.Shah was presented before the court on the expiry of his seven-day custody.He was arrested from Srinagar on July 25 on charges of money laundering in a case dating back to 2005.While seeking extension of Shah’s custody, public prosecutor Rajeev Awasthi told the court that the international ramification of the financial involvement is to be unearthed.From the investigation it has been revealed that Shah has been in continuous contact with elements residing in Pakistan, in the garb of the Kashmir issue, the ED stated.The agency said that Shah had received various hawala consignments for disrupting peace in Kashmir and was in contact with Tahreek-e-Hurriyat.Shah’s custody is required to examine and analyse bank details, money trail and e-mail records.“The international contacts of Pakistan, Dubai and England from the mobile call details records have to be ascertained for their role in anti-national activities along with the terror funding into India through hawala channels,” the agency said.“The source of hawala transfers and further dissemination of the funds have to be ascertained.”However, defence counsel M S Khan opposed the ED plea and denied the charges.Shah’s arrest relates to an August 2005 case where the Delhi police’s Special Cell had arrested hawala dealer Mohamed Aslam Wani.Wani had confessed that he had passed on hawala money worth Rs20mn to Shah.The ED had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against both.