The Jamia Masjid in Sri Nagar, one of the largest mosques in the region, was on Friday reverberated with Azadi and anti-India slogans as a large throng of the crowd who had gathered for the Friday prayers was heard chanting Azadi slogans and hailing Zakir Musa, the Chief of the terrorist group Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, who was killed by the Indian Army in an encounter in May 2019.
Ashraf Wani, a journalist with India Today group, shared a video clip from the Jamia mosque in which people could be heard shouting slogans that called for secession from India.
Along with Azadi slogans, shouts of “Nara e Taqbeer, Allahu Akbar” can also be heard in the video clip attached by Wani.
In addition to Azadi slogans, stone-pelting was also witnessed outside the mosque where personnel of the Jammu and Kashmir Police and Central Reserve Police Force were deployed as a part of security measures to ensure the peace and tranquillity in the Valley is not disturbed.
However, on Friday, stones were pelted at the security personnel, a rare occurrence following the abrogation of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019, which stripped the state of its separate status and enabled greater integration with the union of India. Shortly after the stone-pelting began, the law enforcement officials swung into action and disbursed the crowd.
Earlier last month, CRPF DG Kuldeep Singh admitted that the incidents of stone-pelting had reduced after the abrogation of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir. “After the abrogation of Article 370, the incidents of stone-pelting are almost nil,” he had said on 16 March 2022, on the sideline of the DG parade carried out ahead of the 83rd raising day ceremony of the CRPF.
Abrogation of Article 370
On 5 August 2019, the Government of India, in one fell swoop, invalidated the separate status, or autonomy, granted under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution to Jammu and Kashmir and liberated the state from a decades-long Nehruvian blunder.
Besides the abrogation of Article 370, the Modi government also created two new Union Territories by bifurcating the state of Jammu and Kashmir:- Jammu and Kashmir (with Legislature) and Ladakh (without Legislature), thereby effecting a greater control over the erstwhile state.