PAKISTAN
During the era of ban on social websites, Facebook created a miracle. It reunited a woman with her family after 60 years. Identified as Jehan Sultana, the 75 year old woman had fled from Charsadda village (Pakistan) from an old man whom she was given in marriage as a minor. The family could not trace her. She had, however, came to J&K and married a man who was a labourer in Lahore. They raised six children. Rahimuddin, a Facebook page owner on Pakistani side, received a message on his page from Kashmir. He was Ziaul Haq, one of Sultana’s sons. He requested Rahimuddin to help trace the family whose daughter was once lost. He finally traced her brother. He later helped her family talk to her on IMO video chat app. She recognised everything. Finally, after some difficulty, she has travelled to see her roots on the other side of LoC.
KULGAM
Government has put a price on the head of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militant Umar Majid. He is being accused of masterminding the attack on an empty cash van and killing five cops and two private security guards of the bank. Police have posted reward posters in various Kulgam areas. A resident of Sutch village, Umer Majid is 22. Police says Ishfaq Palla accompanied him in the attack.
LEH
Lo and behold. The town that is cleaner than the twin cities of Srinagar and Jammu in J&K, it is in the Ladakh desert. In an all India rank, Leh is at 100 cleanest urban spot followed by Islamabad at 197. Srinagar figures at 241 and Jammu 251. It is a problem that while Kashmir was discriminating with Jammu, this time it is Ladakh. Is Dr Nirmal Singh aware of it?
SRINAGAR
As entire Kashmir was pre-occupied about how to reduce tensions in the academic spaces at a time when durbar had come for six months, a Chinar massacre was going on near TRC. Three major Chinars, most believed to be multi-century old, were cut to pieces to pave way for some road widening. There were various people working to convince the development planners that there was a way out that would save the mighty trees, incidentally part of Kashmir identity, nobody listened. So in protest poet Zareef Ahmad Zareef led a group to formally register his concern. He had young boys using guitars to send waves of protest around.
SRINAGAR
A Srinagar court has bailed out an alleged stone pelter who is barely nine year old. A class III student of SSM School Noorbagh, the Safakadal resident, according to his family, was on his way to tuitions when police picked him and accused him of stone pelting. An FIR (59 of 2017) was registered against the boy under Sections 147, 148, 149, 152, 427, 336 RPC and he was brought to court for judicial remand on April 29. Then he was sent for two days to a Juvenile Home in Harwan and was finally bailed out.
KOLKATTA
Baroda-based artist Rollie Mukherjee says she was blocked by Facebook, apparently for her works on Kashmir and the struggle of its people. She has travelled across India to exhibit her work and spread awareness about Kashmir. Since April 29, she is unable to log-in. “This blockade is nothing but a gag on my work, my freedom of expression,” she was quoted saying. She says it has come after a few months of constant trolling. Mukherjee’s works use women as an agency to express the anxieties of the Kashmiris.
