SRI NAGAR: Parts of the Kashmir Valley came to a halt on Sunday during a strike called by the Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), an amalgam of separatist groups, to protest against the ban on Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front led by Yasin Malik, officials said.
Shops and business establishments remained closed while public transport was off the roads, they said.
However, the strike call evoked little response in other parts of the Valley as the weekly flea market, locally known as the Sunday market, operated normally.
This is the second organisation in J&K which has been banned this month. Earlier, the Centre had banned the Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir.
The Yasin Malik-led JKLF was banned on Friday for a series of violent acts and being in the forefront of separatist activities in the militancy-hit state since 1988, Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba had said.
Separatists on Saturday called for a strike against the Centre’s decision to ban the JKLF, saying it was “undemocratic” and a “political vendetta”.
“The Government of India’s decision of banning the JKLF for five years is a highly authoritarian, autocratic and pure political vendetta,” the JRL said in a statement.
“The way the government of India is announcing bans and crackdowns on organisations associated with the Kashmir struggle, arresting the leadership and slapping them with the draconian PSA (Public Safety Act), killing youth in custody .... exposes their hollow claims of democracy,” it added.
The organisations said by imposing bans and booking separatist leaders in “fake” cases, the government “cannot change the reality of the Kashmir issue.”
Info on virtual sims
SRINAGAR: A request will be sent to the United States to seek details from a service provider of “virtual SIMs” which were allegedly used by Jaish-e-Mohammad suicide bomber Adil Dar run-up run up to the February 14 attack on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama and his Pakistan and Kashmir-based handlers, officials said.
Searches carried out by the J&K police and central security agencies at an encounter site in Tral as well as other locations, it was found that Dar was in constant touch with the JeM across the border, they said.
In a fairly new modus operandi, the attackers were using a ‘virtual SIM’, generated by a service provider in the US.
In this technology, the computer generates a telephone number and the user downloads an application of the service provider on their smartphone.