A massive protest was staged by locals in frontier district Kupwara after Army, Police and Para-military Central Reserve Police Force personnel in a joint operation arrested 55 people during pre-dawn crackdown on Saturday.The locals from Taras Natnusa area of Kupwara district told news agency CNS that hundreds of Army men from 47 Rashtriya Rifles, CRPF and Jammu Kashmir Police cordoned off the village at around 5 AM of Saturday morning. “It was a massive crackdown. The locals were not only beaten but residential houses were also damaged. This village is comprised of 350 households while government forces during search operation caused damage to more than 120 residential houses. Even apple boxes were ransacked while dozens of such boxes were lifted by troopers,” the protesting people said.
The locals said that government forces made a queue of village people and arrested 55 of them. “To save themselves from the wrath of these forces personnel more than 50 youth escaped from the village and we don’t know where they have gone,” the villagers said.“This village is 8 kilometers away from the highway and it didn’t witness any major pro-freedom procession from the past three months. We don’t know why this village was targeted and why people were roughed up and arrested,” they said.When contacted, Senior Superintendent of Police Kupwara Shamsher Singh told CNS that most of the processions were witnessed in Taras Natnusa village. “I can’t give you the exact number of people who were arrested but, yes, during the crackdown, we picked up the wanted stone-pelters,” he said and refuted the allegations that houses were ransacked, people were beaten up and apple boxes were lifted. “There is nothing like that. The search operation was launched to nab the ‘wanted’ pelters,” he added. (CNS) (Photographs attached)