{"id":1949,"date":"2014-05-01T06:34:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T06:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kashmir-today.net\/?p=1949"},"modified":"2014-05-01T06:34:29","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T06:34:29","slug":"bashir-left-without-seeing-his-sister-in-bridal-attire-next-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=1949","title":{"rendered":"Bashir left without seeing his sister in bridal attire next month"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tasavur Mushtaq<\/strong><\/p>\n

SRINAGAR:\u00a0<\/strong>It is dark, but scary in Nawa Kadal area of old city. Pall of gloom has descended around as a young man Bashir Ahmad Bhat just fell to bullets on the day of ballot. Wails, tears, slogans, smoke and shelling marked his funeral.<\/p>\n

Bashir, son of Ghulam Muhammad, according to reports, was in early twenties. Resident of Gratbal Nawakadal, Bashir after changing few professions was now into needle work. He is survived by parents, two sisters and a brother.<\/p>\n

With death of Bashir, hopes of his family are dashed. Bashir left without seeing his sister in bridal attire next month. And her would-be-bride sister is shell shocked, as her neighbours say, \u201cthe blood spilled over her\u00a0mehandi<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened on a relatively peaceful day? Locals say, as the youth engaged police and CRPF in stone pelting after culmination of polling in Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency, \u201cenraged CRPF men fired indiscriminately\u201d which left Bashir dead and other five others injured.<\/p>\n

The bullet hit Bashir while ballot was being taken to \u2018safer place\u2019. Locals say that \u201cBashir was not a stone pelter and neither tried to snatch rifle.\u201d He was, they say just standing on the roadside and had \u201cnothing to do what was going around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Official sources told a local news gathering agency that paramilitary CRPF opened fire on a group of protesters at Nawakadal following injury to one of its personnel in stone pelting. They identified the man as Sandeep Kumar.<\/p>\n

Police in its bulletin said, \u201cIn the evening after the polling was over a party\u00a0of security forces came under severe attack by some miscreants in Nawakadal area in the jurisdiction of police station Safakadal, Srinagar. The miscreants snatched the weapon of a security force personnel. In the ensuing scuffle two persons identified as Bashir Ahmed Bhat son of Ghulam Hassan Bhat resident of Gratbal Nawakadal and Nazir Ahmed Kaloo resident of Nawakadal got injured. Bashir Ahmed later on succumbed to his injuries. While Nazir Ahmed Kaloo has got injured in arm and is out of danger.\u201d<\/p>\n

What locals said and police claimed, CRPF did not buy the arguments and vehemently rejected the allegations.<\/p>\n

Public Relations Officer CRPF Kishore Prasad is quoted to have said,\u00a0\u201cOur men didn\u2019t open fire. There were other forces as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

On being asked a CRPF man namely Sandip Kumar was injured in NawaKadal, Prasad said: \u201cHe was not injured at NawaKadal but was injured at Soura. He has been hit by stone in his eye and sustained grave injuries,\u201d adding that he is part of 117 Battalion. He said that the 73 and 161 Battalions of CRPF were deployed in Nawakadal\u00a0on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

There was condemnation from across the sections. While State\u2019s chief executive Omar Abdullah expressed grief over the loss of life. He also said that \u201ccircumstances leading to this tragic loss of life would be thoroughly probed.\u201d His father and NC president Dr Farooq Abdullah claimed that \u201che stands with the family in this moment of inconsolable sorrow and loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

State\u2019s principal opposition PDP president Mehbboba Mufti expressed her \u201cheart felt condolence\u201d to the bereaved family and said \u201ckillings with impunity only add to tragedies and it is unfortunate that at the end of a comparatively peaceful day a precious life was lost to disproportionate use of force\u201d<\/p>\n

Separatist camp also condemned the killing and called for shutdown on Thursday.<\/p>\n

However, the pain and agony did not stop with Bashir\u2019s death. Eye witnesses told that while Bashir was being taken for final journey, men in uniform fired several rounds of tear smoke shells to disperse the \u201cunruly mob\u201d.<\/p>\n

With around 26 per cent polling in Srinagar Lok sabha seat, both NC and PDP claimed victory while separatists congratulated people for boycott. No matter who wins, the family in old city will never forget April 30, 2014-the day they lost reason to live and be happy again.<\/p>\n

As Bashir was being laid to rest, a light shower made the soil moist. The protests were on. Still come to terms of loss, the family of Bashir is in shock. And official sources said that the day next would have restrictions in place. Bashir along with polling percentage is now another figure in the list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tasavur Mushtaq SRINAGAR:\u00a0It is dark, but scary in Nawa Kadal area of old city. Pall of gloom has descended around as a young man Bashir Ahmad Bhat just fell to bullets on the day of ballot. Wails, tears, slogans, smoke and shelling marked his funeral. Bashir, son of Ghulam Muhammad, according to reports, was in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1950,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-1949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-top"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}