Kashmir Police: Won’t Allow 8th Muharram Procession

SRINAGAR, Kashmir - Ahlul Bayt News Agency - Inspector General of Police SJM Gillani Wednesday said that the police will not allow the Alam Sharief procession of 8th Muharram on the traditional routes on Thursday.

“We won’t allow the Muharram procession taking the security situation into view,” IGP Gillani said.

Ittehadul Muslimeen patron Maulana Muhammad Abbas Ansari, has already announced the procession will be taken out despite government curbs on Thursday from city’s Guru Bazar area in the morning and the same will culminate at Dalgate in uptown following the traditional routes in the evening.

However the successive state government’s have thwarted Maulana’s attempts to lead the procession every year since 1990 when the ban was imposed.

Ittehadul Muslimeen even moved court in January 2008. Party filed a petition in the Jammu Kashmir High Court seeking quashing of the ban clamped by the former Governor Jagmohan but the state government did not respond.

In December 2009, J&K high court once again directed the state Government to file the objections without eliciting any response.

Authorities clamp an undeclared curfew in the areas from where traditional procession used to pass meeting stiff resistance from the thousands of mourners who defy the ban and insist on taking out the procession. Every year these areas, including capitals city centre turns into a battle zone with police subjecting mourners to brute force. “There is nothing we can do now other than protest and take out processions in defiance as curbs are placed on our religious rituals here, said Maulana Masroor Ansari, Shia representative in the moderate Hurriyat Conference.

Only small mourning rallies and processions are allowed in select Shia dominated areas of the city.





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