At the peak of summer unrest in Kashmir Valley in 2010 PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti had accused former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah of demonising his own people by dubbing the entire population as stone-pelters.
later, a total number of 1,811 youths were granted amnesty in stone-pelting cases registered in 2010-11 in the State by the Omar Abdullah-led alliance Government in the State.
This was done to facilitate youths to pursue higher education and to ensure that their involvement in these cases did not affect the verification of their character and antecedents for obtaining passports, jobs and loans.
Now within days after becoming the first woman Chief Minister of the Muslim majority State of Jammu & Kashmir, her own Government has slapped two separate FIR’s against budding engineers studying in the National Institute of Technology (NIT) following incidents of clashes between two groups of students after India lost the T-20 Cricket World Cup semi-final against the West Indies.
Ironically, the crackdown on the non-Kashmiri students was announced a day after Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and her deputy Nirmal Singh assured Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani and parents that non-Kashmiri students were safe inside NIT campus and adequate security measures have been taken to prevent fresh clashes between the two groups of students.
Hundreds of non-Kashmiri students had also raised the demand of shifting NIT away from Srinagar before the high-level team of Union HRD Ministry while raising the issue of lack of security on the campus on Wednesday.
The Centre had also deployed additional paramilitary forces on the campus to instil confidence among the ‘restive’ students after videos of State policemen brutally beating NIT students went viral on social networking sites.
According to police spokesman, the police has registered two separate FIRs regarding the incidents of the violence that took place on NIT Srinagar campus on last Friday and Tuesday”.
The first FIR was registered against unknown persons for the clashes between outstation and local students on April 1, a day after India lost to West Indies in the semi-final of the World T20 Cup. During the day long stand off local students had chanted anti national slogans ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ and ‘Hum kya Chate Azadi’ in response to chants of Bharat Mata ki Jai and Vande Mataram by the non-local students on the campus.
The police has invoked sections 148 (rioting), 149 (unlawful assembly), 427 (mischief), 336 (endangering life of others) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) for the clashes between local and outstation students that took place on Friday, a police official said.
In the second FIR registered on April 5, the police, besides slapping the charges of the previous FIR, has added sections 353 (assault on public servant) and 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant).
While no one has been named in the two FIRs yet, the official said police is investigating the video evidence of the violence that took place on the days of incidents.
Police also released video clippings showing non-local students attacking the cops with stones and damaging property at the campus.