What Next For Mehbooba Mufti?

A week-and-a-half after Hizbul leader Burhan Wani’s killing, the valley is still simmering. And the disconnect between CM Mehbooba Mufti and her administration in this time of crisis isn’t helping matters.

- Asit Jolly and Naseer Ganai

Two ­and ­a ­half hours past mid­ night on July 16, a squad of the Jammu & Kashmir Police (JKP) laid an ambush at the entrance of Srinagar’s Press Enclave. Minutes later, as the solitary van sho­wed up, carefully negotiating the coils of concertina strewn across the road, the waiting policemen sprang into action, aiming cocked Kalashnikovs, angrily barking orders at the lone occupant to get off. A cursory look in the back confirmed they had what they wanted—no, it was no wanted terrorist but stacks of fresh-­off-­the­ press copies of Rising Kashmir, just one among some 65 Urdu, Kashmiri and English dailies that did not reach readers that morning.

The media blackout was part of the latest crackdown in the Kashmir Valley, set ablaze all over again by the slaying of Burhan Wani, the Hizbul Mujahideen commander who was gunned down by security forces at Bemdoora village in South Kashmir’s Kokernag area on July 8 evening.

The ensuing public fury, witnessed nationally on network television, was articulated through a spontaneous eruption of angry street protests. Clearly taken by surprise, the state police, paramilitary and army found themselves at the receiving end of an unrelenting barrage of stones and Molotov cocktails.

Close to a fortnight into the pro­tests that unpredictably erupted at the unlikeliest of locations, the Mehbooba Mufti­led PDP­BJP government officially acknowledged that 37 protesters had died from bullet and shotgun (pellet gun) wounds. An astounding 1,948 civilians—men, women and children as young as five years old—suffered injuries. Numbers conveyed to Union home minister Rajnath Singh from Srinagar, as he rose to speak in the LokSabha on July 18 afternoon, stated that 1,671 security personnel were also injured, including some from grenade and gunshot wounds.