Srinagar, September 09, 2024 (TDI): Indian troops has killed at least two persons after dubbing them as suspected during a campaign for local elections in the Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK).
Though no independent sources has yet confirmed that the killed persons were really fighters, however, Indian soldiers claimed on Monday to have killed two suspected fighters during elections campaign in the forested Nowshera, in the disputed region of Kashmir. This area is located near Pakistani border.
IoK is gearing up for the first local assembly elections in a decade, with voting in the three-phased poll beginning on September 18.
The army claimed that military supplies and automatic weapons were seized, a claim they always propagate even if they kill innocent citizen.
Since 1989 tens of thousands of people were killed, and millions of people were tortured in the area by the 50,000 Indian troops deployed in the region as it was occupied.
Affairs in the disputed territory is being run without an elected government since 2019 when its partial autonomy was cancelled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and it was brought under the so called New Delhi’s direct rule.
Article 370 of Indian constitution, giving status of special autonomy to the held Kashmir was repealed against the international norms by a presidential order.
However, neither international community nor the UN is accepting the new laws and consider it as against the international norms as the matter of IoK has to be resolved under the UN resolution.
Read More: OIC contact group reaffirms support for Kashmiri self-determination/
Kashmiris are also critics of India’s Hindu nationalist-led government’s attempt to dilute the demographics of Muslim-majority Kashmir with Hindu settlers which become possible after the mentioned amendment in the law.
In the past two years, more than 50 Indian soldiers were killed in clashes with fighters mostly in the occupied Jammu district.
Pakistan, another party in the dispute, in the sub-continent, has totally rejected the changes in the status of the disputed area, urged for focusing on resolution of the dispute for peace and stability in South Asia.
