Srinagar, Feb 11 : Sporadic violence left three people dead in the Kashmir valley despite a curfew that was extended into a third day on Monday in the wake of the execution of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
Afzal Guru was hanged in Tihar jail on Saturday morning. Ahead of the execution, authorities has ordered people in most parts of the valley to remain indoors indefinitely in anticipation of protests.
Despite the curfew, hundreds of residents protested on Sunday and clashed with troops at several places.
In Watergam village near Sopore, which was Guru's home, at least four people were wounded, one critically, as police and paramilitary troops fired tear gas shells and bullets to disperse an angry crowd, police said.
One of the injured, 12-year-old Obaid Mushtaq, died early Monday, said Aijaz Mustafa, a medical superintendent at the S.K. Institute of Medical Sciences in Srinagar.
He said another 18-year-old boy was on life support.
Another young man died in Sumbal village in northern Kashmir on Sunday after he jumped into a frigid river while trying to run away from troops who were firing tear gas and using batons to disperse protesters. Four policemen were injured in separate clashes.
On Monday, local villagers fished out another body of a high school boy who was missing since Sunday's protest in Sumbal from the river, police said.
Thousands of troops fanned out across the valley, and metal barricades and razor wire blocked all major roads.
Cable television and mobile Internet services were shut in most parts of the valley Kashmir's nearly 60 newspapers were unable to publish.
Showkat Ahmed Motta, the editor of an daily newspaper, Kashmir Reader, said that his paper published Sunday's edition but police seized the copies.
“Police gave us verbal orders not to publish for four days,” he said.
A local police official denied that any newspapers were stopped from publishing, but said the strict curfew may have prevented copies of the papers from reaching readers.
Afzal Guru confessed in TV interviews that he helped plot the attack on Parliament that killed 14 people, including the five gunmen, but later denied any involvement and said he had been tortured into confessing.
Government prosecutors said Guru was a member of the Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, a charge that Guru denied.
Guru had been on death row since first being convicted in 2002. Subsequent appeals in higher courts were rejected, and India's Supreme Court set an execution date for October 2006.
But his execution was delayed after his wife filed a mercy petition with India's president. That petition, the last step in the judicial process, was turned down last week.
John Samuel, Postmaster General in Srinagar, told reporters that the letter posted in New Delhi on Feb. 8 was delivered to Guru's family on Monday.
J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah said: “I wish we were the ones authorized to give the news to the family—we owed him that much.”
