On July 18, in the Gool area of Ramban, thousands of villagers gathered at a BSF camp to protest against troopers who had the night before barged into a local madrasa, where they beat the brother of the imam and damaged—and allegedly desecrated—a copy of the Quran. (The BSF claims it did no such thing, and that all its troopers did was accost a suspicious-looking local who chose not to cooperate with them; as far as they are concerned, all that followed was the handiwork of ‘anti-national elements’.) A few hours after the protesters gathered, even as their leaders and police officers attempted to calm them, BSF troopers fired, killing four people and wounding 43 others. Their firing seems to have been unprovoked. The local superintendent of police, Javed Mattoo, has stated that he was taken by surprise, and since the police were attempting to separate the protesters from the BSF camp, he too was in the line of fire. The deputy commissioner, Shyam Vinod Meena, was present too, but the BSF paid no attention. So much for civilian authority.