SRINAGAR: From ‘crackdown’ to a linguistically respectful CASO – the cordon and search operation, the routine military operation has come a long way. But it got a new picture on Friday. It is colourful but bizarre. The details make it distinctly different.
The CASO was reported from Tral where, in the outskirts, the army and the police sealed the local major school. The top commander leading the operation told reporters “that searches were launched following a tip-off about the presence of militants inside the school.”
The operation that started around 10:30 am and concluded by 2 pm. Nothing objectionable was found, not even after scanning the CCTV footage of the school.
The Hamdard Grammer School witnessed a massive movement of the troops from 42 RR at around 10:30 am when a couple of armoured vehicles stopped at the main gate. The school that has an overall enrolment of 850 students for students between pre-nursery to the tenth standard, is located almost 4 ms away from the town in lush green surroundings. However, because of ongoing Eid celebrations, the attendance was quite less. The school is managed by almost 60 teachers, half of them female.
Soon the soldiers were busy surrounding the school and sealing the exits. School principal Riyaz Ahmad Shah said, the after the two gates were sealed, the soldiers summoned the teachers – who were not in their classes, and without hampering the class work, asked the management that they have to identify every single students even from lower primary classes.
“Al the students were virtually paraded before the soldiers before they boarded their buses,” Shah said. “The soldiers had already searched the buses.”
After the scared students left the school, college management said, the soldiers carried out searches in every classroom. “Later a group of cops led by DySP inspected the CCTV footage of the school premises and found nothing except the routine school activity,” Shah said, adding the cordon was lifted at 2 pm.
