By Mudassir Maqbool
Pulwama: Police has launched a massive crackdown on youth suspected of ‘being stone pelters’ ahead of Lok Sabha Polls in Pulwama and Shopian district with almost 40 persons arrested in two days.
The twin districts will go to polls on May 3 for Anantnag parliamentary constituency held in three phases.
In the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday police raided three localities including Newa, Gudoora and Parigam areas of Pulwama and detained nineteen youth.
Local sources said that forces cordoned off the villages and detained the youth.
“Nineteen boys have been picked up,” locals said.
At least twenty four youth were detained in a nocturnal raid in Pulwama and Shopian during intervening night of Monday and Tuesday.
Locals in Murran and Kangan villages of Pulwama claimed that twenty boys were detained by forces in a predawn raid.
During same night four youth were arrested in Shopian.
Police sources confided that the detention spree is to control ‘law and order’ problem on the polling day.
“Many other persons including boys who have stone pelting or law and order related cases have been asked to present themselves in respective police stations on the polling day,” the officer said.
He said that they will have to stay in the Police station till the polling is over.
The police officer did anticipate low voting in the districts but said they are not concerned about the polls but about the ‘situation’ in day.
“We do anticipate violence like stone pelting in certain areas and are taking precautionary measures,” he said.
While another officer claimed that the arrested persons are being questioned for their involvement in stone pelting related incidents, he did not give any timeline as to when they will be released.
“They will be released in due course of time as the investigation proceeds. It is a routine process nothing special,” he claimed.
The detention spree comes days ahead of polls in the twin volatile districts that are seen as militancy hotbeds in south Kashmir.
It is for the first time that Election Commission has divided polls for APC in three phases.
