Five years ago, the stones that struck
He doesn’t give his real name. “Call me by any name, call me Farhat,” he says.
Farhat, as the 24-year-old wants to be called, is “scared”. Scared that the police may pick him up “one more time”. “I don’t want to go to jail again,” says the unemployed youth.
About five years ago, though, Farhat did not fear the cops. An angry 20-year-old then, he had joined hundreds of young men in pelting stones at the police during the 2010 unrest in Srinagar. The “stone pelters” were mostly teenagers and men in their 20s.
“Every Friday, my friends and I would arm ourselves with stones, go to the streets and fight with police and paramilitary forces,” he says.
About 5,000 stone pelters were arrested then, including Farhat, who spent two-and-a-half years in jail under the PSA. Released in 2013 along with most other stone pelters — about 100 are still behind bars — Farhat would rather not be “so visible” on the streets now, leave alone arming himself with stones.
“It is difficult to escape the police now,” he says. The police, he says, have an “elaborate network of informers who have infiltrated into the ranks of stone throwers”. “They have installed security cameras everywhere. If there is a protest during the day, the youth who participate in it are picked-up by the evening,” he adds.
After the 2010 street protests, the police had launched a crackdown against the stone pelters. With CCTV cameras installed in every part of Srinagar, the police had identified and booked many pelters under the PSA.
Farhat, who is from Old Srinagar, says that after the unrest, the police had also launched a recruitment drive in the area. “They recruited a large number of stone pelters, who helped them catch other stone pelters,” he says.
Will Kashmiri youth pelt stones again? “No,” he says. “People are staying away from the streets because of fear. But if there is an incident like that in 2008 or 2010, it will start again. It just needs a trigger.”
Source:: Indian Express
