AP News, October 20th, 2007
Thousands of angry villagers torched government vehicles in street battles that injured 30 police after army soldiers allegedly shot dead a schoolteacher in Indian Kashmir, officials and villagers said Saturday.
Rawathpora village residents claimed that Indian soldiers detained teacher Abdul Rashid Mir, 26, outside a school Friday, then tortured and fatally shot him while he was in custody.
The Indian army said Mir was accidentally shot after he got into a squabble with an army patrol team on Friday. It said it regretted the death, but called the villagers' allegations "baseless."
Mir's neighbor, Latief Ahmed, said soldiers picked Mir up near the government school where he taught, then took the teacher away and shot him dead. Ahmed did not say how he knew what happened to the teacher while in custody.
An army spokesman, Col. Majinder Singh, said Mir "was killed as a soldier on patrol duty accidentally pulled the trigger and the bullet hit him during an identification check."
Police have registered a case over the killing against a major and one other soldier, said top local police official Vijay Kumar.
Sentiments against predominantly Hindu India run deep in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, a Himalayan territory split between India and neighboring Pakistan but claimed in full by both. Separatists have been fighting since 1989 for independence from India or merger with Islamic Pakistan.
Indian government forces are often accused of killing and torturing people they suspect of links to the militants. Authorities routinely investigate such allegations, but prosecutions have been rare.
Kashmir is split between India and Pakistan, but claimed by both in its entirety. At least 68,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since the rebellion began.
On Friday and Saturday, thousands of villagers carried Mir's body in a procession, shouting slogans against India and the military.
The villagers on Saturday set fire to two government jeeps and hurled rocks as police tried to persuade them to return home, a police officer on condition of anonymity, saying he was not authorized to speak to media. Police used tear gas and fired warning shots in the air to stop them.
At least 30 policemen and 10 villagers have been injured in the two days of street fighting between the villagers and security forces, the officer said.
