Kashmir unrest: Govt sticks to restrictions to tackle protesters, fuels anger

“There will be no relaxation in curfew and restrictions across the Kashmir Valley,” police said on Thursday afternoon. “The curfew and restrictions will remain strictly in place throughout the day till further orders”.

While the police statement contradicted the state government’s announcement that no curfew was in place at most parts of Central and North Kashmir, the objective of the order was to break the shutdown called by the separatists.

“We can’t allow the separatists to run a parallel government. They can’t dictate,” a senior minister told The Indian Express. “We have to establish the writ of the state even if it means taking tough and people-unfriendly measures”.

Thursday’s police order that curfew wouldn’t be relaxed in any part of the Valley, sources say, was aimed to create public pressure on the separatists to call off the strike. “If we allow people the breathers the separatists give them, this agitation would stretch. We can’t let that happen,” said a senior police officer.

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On Thursday, the volunteer groups — that had set up counters at SMHS, providing free food and medicine — took to the streets saying the police have asked them to wind up the stalls. “You have now even stopped us,” volunteers complained to junior Health Minister Asia Naqash when she visited the hospital. “The police have asked us to wind up”.

While Naqash told them the government hasn’t taken any such decision, police denied the allegations. “No policeman or officer has entered the (SMHS) campus. They (volunteers) have wilfully wound up,” Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Police Central Kashmir Ghulam Hassan Bhat told The Indian Express.