Narendra Modi, who is on a day long visit to Jammu and Kashmir, kick started the work on Zojila tunnel and announced that development projects worth 25000 crore will be started in the state.
However, all this was done amid severe restrictions and an internet blockade across the valley. In wake of a call for peaceful protest against Modi’s visit in Lal Chowk by the Joint Resistance Leadership, all ways leading to the place were sealed by the government forces.
Apart from the common man, even journalists had to face ‘restrictions and censorship.’
In Srinagar’s Karan Nagar area, CRPF personnel snatched the phone of freelance journalist Adnan Bhat and deleted pictures he had clicked of the barricades, set up to block the road, reported the Kashmirwalla.
According to the report, people at the barricade were telling CRPF officials to let them go as they have to go a nearby shrine to offer prayers. Many people in Kashmir visit certain shrines on particular dates in the month of Ramzan.
“We were passing through the area when they stopped our vehicle. I showed them (CRPF) my ID. While he was checking the ID, I clicked a few pictures of the scene there. We were about to leave when another CRPF personnel came up and asked me what was in my pocket,” Bhat said.
“I showed him my phone and he started deleting pictures from it. In the meantime he told me to get the papers of the vehicle. He called the cops and they took me to the Karan Nagar police station,” Bhat told Free Press Kashmir.
The police officials later took away documents of the car of another journalist Fahad Shah, while Bhat was taken to the police station, where the SHO Karan Nagar Maseer Asgar let the journalist off.
In order to prevent protests, barricades and concertina wires were laid on the roads amid huge deployment of armed forces. All ways leading to Lal Chowk were sealed in wake of the protest call.
On Friday, during his sermon, Mirwaiz had said that the proposed rally of the Joint Resistance Leadership must be allowed so that Modi can hear the ‘Man ki baat’ of the people of Kashmir.
