KL NEWS NETWORK
SRINAGAR
Right now it is midnight but not in Tral, the home of slain rebel Burhan Wani. Thousands of people have assembled in the town and the trickle is still on way. They are coming in tractor trolleys, trucks, buses, cars and even on foot.
At around 10 pm, there were announcements from the mike-fitted mosques asking hosts to prepare dinner for the guest mourners. There have been some mass dinners in and around Dar ul Uloom but most of the people still on the roads are not keen to have their dinners, reports from the town said.
When a senior Kashmir Life staffer, who is in town, asked some sloganeering youth about their dinners, they felt slighted and lashed back: “Do you think, it is time to eat.”
Main Chowk of the town is the epicentre of the congregation. One spot there is marked by a group of around 100 women who have huddled and are singing the wedding songs for Burhan.
Neither of the persons Kashmir Life talked to was able to suggest any idea about the number of people who might have reached Tral. “I saw thousands on way,” one middle rung police officer who returned from the time said. “It was unending line.”
Till 11 pm, locals said that a tractor trolley with mourning and sloganeering hoards would land in the town. There were people who had come from as far as Islamabad. The rush reduced later.
Most of the people who have assembled in the town are surrounding huge fires on the roads lit by mobs using the used tyres. Some of these fires were extinguished by the rains only to be revived later. Later, the people went to the local mosques and to keep them engaged, the local managements asked preachers to make speeches on Islam and the contemporary situation within and outside Kashmir. “It is more like a Shab,” one resident said. Shab means night which is usually a reference to the nights like Shab-e-Qadr and Shab-e-Baraat, the nights when people pray and not sleep.
Police and other agencies in the security grid are restricted to their secured garrisons. Officials said they are under strict instructions to avoid any contact that could impact the situation.
Nobody in the town is in a position to offer any idea about when, and if at all, the body of the slain militant will be handed over to the family for final rites.
