After Chandigarh Doctor, Punjab Police Evict Kashmiri Students From Flat

Three Kashmiri students were allegedly forced to leave their rented accommodation in Punjab’s Zirakpur after a dozen policemen ransacked their place, asked for verified credentials and suspected them to keep weapons. 

“The policemen asked if we are Kashmiri and told us ‘yahan kuch karne aate ho aur wahan kuch aur karte ho’ and then asked us if we had any weapons,” a report by the Indian Express has quoted one of the students Tajamul Imran as saying. 

According to the report, the police called the broker who had helped them get the accommodation to remove them.  The students have alleged that the police interrogated them harshly, despite them submitting identity papers including Aadhaar to the broker for verification. 

The students even feared that they kill be killed in a fake encounter when the policemen began searching their apartment, the report adds. 

However, the Zirakpur station house officer Pawan Kumar and SSP Kuldeep Singh Chahal has refuted allegations of specifically targeting the Kashmiri youths, adding that the landlord will be booked for not getting the tenants verified, the report said. 

The incident is reminiscent of another discriminatory attack on Kashmiris in a Chandigarh hospital. 

A doctor at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research in Chandigarh (PGIMER) had allegedly told a patient from Kashmir that he " throws stones at our security forces in the Valley and come here to seek treatment,”

Tensions in Kashmir were aggravated with incidents of stone throwing by mostly the local youth on Indian Armed Forces.  Clashes between protesters and armed forces has taken a toll on many lives.

 The tension had spilled over to other parts of the country with Kashmiri students in many parts of the country being threatened by local politicians to go back. Posters and hoardings had sprung up in parts of Uttar Pradesh threatening Kashmiris with dire consequences. 

Read Also: Opinion: With His Aggressive Statement, Did General Rawat Admit That The Entire Kashmiri Population Is Against The Army?

Early this year, the army chief General Bipin Rawat too made an angry statement accusing the "local population" of Kashmir which he says is preventing the army from doing its work and “at times even supporting the terrorists to escape”.