Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, May 22: Days after the death of a girl in explosion in Lassipora near Tosamaidan artillery site in Budgam occurred, protests against its shifting have grown louder.
Inhabitants of Lassipora village today held protests against the death of a 12-year-old girl in an explosion due to a littered shell and demanded impartial probe into the killing.
“We want the firing range to be shifted. Our children are living in a death-trap,” said Misra Begum, an elderly woman protester.
Misra said she has lost her son, 16, four years ago while he was grazing cattle in the Tosamaidan meadow.
“Shabir Ahmad left home to graze cattle in the morning, but we received his body pieces in the evening,” she said, holding his picture in her lap.
12-year-old girl Simran Riyaz died, while his five-year-old brother Riyaz Ahmad was fatally wounded when an unexploded artillery shell left behind by Army went off near their home in Lassipora village, a few kilometers away from the Tosa Maidan firing range over the past five decades.
Later, army refuted that the tragic incident happened because of the left-over-shell by them.
The inhabitants today rejected the army’s statement.
“Where the shell came from? We want to know. It didn’t fall from the heavens,” they said.
Protests also took place in Khag area of the district on Wednesday to press the police to register an FIR against the army for the girl’s death.
Sensing spiraling of the protests, police lodged an open FIR into the case.
More than 64 people have been killed and hundreds more disabled through left-over shells exploding, according to Government figures. But, the villagers put the figure of deaths to 170.
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