NEW DELHI: The sorrow-swept land of Uttarakh and, especially its Government control. Massive stone and tree barriers have come. up along all its main roads, which ‘one would only cross at one’s own peril, It has once again become a land of fortifications, (garh means fortifications, and wal, land).
The old fortifications were to forbid oppressors from entering and the purpose of the new ones is no different.
AS one came down this curfew bound land, from its northern-most tip of Joshimath last week, the Police Club and a jeep were burning in the tiny town of Kamprayag, where the police had opened fire earlier, wounding people, two of whom are said to have subsequently died. In fact, nobody quite knows how many, as the injured were taken to Gauchar.
A clutch of frightened paramilitary men, in large bulletproof vests, were hiding behind a pillar of the iron bridge over the Alakhnanda. They stopped this correspondent to know why he was travelling through an area under indefinite curfew. “Don’t make the fatal mistake of going down towards Rishikesh” they advised, “because in the gathering darkness you are likely to be shot by armed policemen in the curfew towns of Okhimath, Shrinagar, Pauri, Rishikesh or Koldwar, whichever way you go, Or stoned by Uttarakhand activists.”
In all of them, and Tehri also, the police had opened fire and lathicharged people on Oct.3-6, because defying curfew people had demonstrated against the firings near Muzalfarnagar and lathicharges and firing in Delhi on Oct.1-2.
Nobody quite knows how many perished in that brutality. Three hospitals in New Delhi and others in Roorkee, Muzaffamagar, Dehra Dun and nearby places are still full of the injured. The indefinite curfew in Uttarakhand towns makes it impossible to go around and make inquiries. A large number of arrests were made various places this week, including Dethi, Back home, they are believed to be missing, because there is no way of knowing who is in jail and where,
As this correspondent drove on two cold, harrowing nights through Uttarakhand on Oct.5-6, tires were burning at town and village approaches, the police station and a vehicle lay partly gutted in Gwaldam, police posts in Gairsain (the future capital of Uttarakhand), Dwarahat and Chavkhutia were empty, the men there having fled fearing the fury of the people. Liquor shops lay in ruin at a number Of places and burnt hulks of tractors littered the road from Kathgodam to Haldwani, Knots of young people maintained vigilance to prevent the entry of paramilitary or military vehicles. higher and stronger stone cades, Before Gairsain, the barricades Stopped everyone who began descending the hairpin bends, Stretching for miles on both sides of the small town, and in Dwarahat the situation was no different.
After the kidnapping of an engineer and two other officials in Banbasa, in Naini Tal district, on Oct, (there were released after five hours) a number of officials in Uttarakhand have either run away or gone into hiding.
Curfew is something of a new kind of disease for Uttarakhand villagers. A farmer ploughing his fields for sowing winter crops near Pauri was beaten up severely by men of the Provincial Armored constabulary (PAC) for violating the curfew. The villagers do not understand why it should mean that people give up all activity. To a farmer not ploughing his land it is suicide. Traffic along the major pilgrim routes to Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Jamunowi, and the Sikh shrine of Hemkund, has come to a stand Still. Shops were closed for five days. As nothing is going in, sup plies are running thin.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 14, 1994
