More protests in Indian held Kashmir over child’s rape

By News Desk

HELD SRINAGAR: Police in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) fired tear gas on Tuesday as thousands of students protested for a second day over the alleged rape of a three-year-old child.

On Monday more than 70 people were injured, at least 50 of them from the security forces, as demonstrations raged across the disputed territory.

On Tuesday students mostly protested at a university campus in the main city of Srinagar, but hundreds of female students assembled near the city centre demanding quick justice.

Police fired tear smoke shells to confine the students to a college, an officer said. No one was injured. School students also protested across many other towns in the occupied region.

Authorities imposed restrictions on the assembly of people to prevent protests from spreading by deploying thousands of police and paramilitary troops across the territory. The demonstrators have been calling for the accused to be given a harsh sentence. On Monday, police also arrested a school principal who allegedly issued a fake age certificate declaring the accused to be a minor in order to help him evade being punished as an adult. In January 2018, an eight-year-old girl was abducted, starved for a week and murdered after she was raped by several people in the southern Kathua area of occupied Kashmir.