Bullets get the hand that dared to vote

‘‘My mother pleaded to them but they assured her they only wanted to talk to me. I had been to Srinagar just a few days ago and had shown my card to the troops during a routine identification check. I think someone saw it then and informed them,’’ he said.

‘‘If this is what one gets for procuring a voter’s card, how will one ever dare to vote,’’ said his brother Farooq. The two, along with their mother, went to Anantnag where doctors advised them to get Bilal admitted at Bones and Joints Hospital as the bullets had fractured his bones.

In Baramulla, militants have put up posters warning people against participating in the elections. Similar posters can be seen inside mosques where Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizbul Mujahideen have threatened people of dire consequences if they cast their ballot on Monday.

‘‘We won’t let anybody sell the blood of eighty thousand people who have sacrificed their lives for the cause,’’ the posters say.

These posters have shown up mostly in Baramulla and Khanpora, a neighbourhood that rests on the national highway. Some posters have also been spotted in Kanli Bagh and Noor Bagh in the uptown area of Baramulla.

On Thursday, militants lobbed a grenade on a security bunker on Thursday on the cement bridge that connects the old town with the main market here. Poll campaign was immediately stopped in the area.

In Handwara, militants sent letters to those they saw as prospective voters. ‘‘We got a letter warning us not to venture out of our home on September 16,’’ Mohammad Arif, 20, said.

‘‘My mother is so scared that she is forcing us to leave for a relative’s house in Srinagar today only. She wants to keep away from this area,’’ he said.

In the main market-place here, there are posters ordering everyone above six years of age to stay put in their houses on the polling day.