Jammu and Kashmir separatists disrupt flood rescue and relief operations by Army, Congress

SRINAGAR: Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front leader Yasin Malik on Tuesday interrupted a rescue and relief team of Congress leaders from Maharashtra near Budshah Chowk when they were trying to rescue some children stranded in a house in the area.

Malik and his associate, after much argument, took charge of the boat and relief material in it and asked the rescue team to row as per Malik's instructions. The JKLF chief along with Javid Mir and others then distributed the relief material to people stuck in hotels in Lal Chowk and Budshah chowk. This isn't the first time in the last seven days that separatists have tried to disrupt relief operations.

In fact, they've raised banners calling for rejecting relief material. In this, Malik isn't alone. For, another banner asking the Indian Army to stop rescue operation was displayed outside Jamia Masjid in down town Srinagar, the bastion of the chairman of supposedly moderate Hurriyat conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.

The banner at the main gate of the grand mosque, where the Mirwaiz delivers the weekly "political" sermons, reads, "Indian Army helped Indian citizens in Kashmir and not Kashmiris; don't need Indian rescue and relief; stop drama of choppers."

Strangely, the separatists displayed the banners on the main gate of Jamia Masjid where hundreds of localities were marooned with desperate people seeking help from everybody.

Yasin Malik in a statement said, "I strongly condemn the media campaign against me by a section of the Indian media and some Indian stooges in Kashmir." He said these stooges needed some targets to bark at to avoid criticism of their failure and to please their masters. "Such biased and baseless reports aimed at tarnishing my image are nothing but clear indication of intellectual bankruptcy," Malik said.

On September 13, too, separatists had stopped an Army boat carrying an ailing woman from Maisuma, when rescue teams comprising NDRF and soldiers were evacuating stranded people. Women protested against this behavior, but Yasin Malik's associates brushed them aside.

They have been maligning the security forces to drive a wedge that has been sought to be filled by the Army, said a government official.