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Kashmir: No blanket ban on pellet guns, but to be used in rare cases

August 29, 2016

New Delhi, Aug 29: Pellet guns, which are being used by security forces for crowd control in Jammu and Kashmir, will not be completely banned but will be fired in "rarest of rare cases", a top government official said today.kashmir4

Senior government functionaries have arrived at this conclusion after extensive consultations with security forces and examining the ground realities in Kashmir Valley.

The option of firing pellet guns will remain but it will be used only in rarest of rare cases, the official said.

The government is facing severe criticism for using the pellet guns for crowd control in Kashmir Valley as the weapon has caused large-scale injuries in the 51-day unrest following killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani on July 8.

During his two-day visit to Kashmir on August 24-25, Home Minister Rajnath Singh had said an alternative to pellet guns will be given to security forces in the coming days.

"In the coming few days, we will give an alternative to the pellet guns. These guns were earlier considered non-lethal but some incidents have taken place... We formed an expert committee a month ago which was expected to give report in two months but it will be coming very soon," he had said.

The expert panel, set up by the Home Ministry to find an alternative to pellet guns, is believed to have zeroed in on 'PAVA shells', a chilli-based ammunition, which is less lethal and immobilises the target temporarily.

The committee held a demonstration of the newly-developed shells at a test field earlier this week and gave the thumbs up for use by security forces for crowd control and during protests like those being witnessed in the Kashmir Valley in place of the pellet guns which have caused grievous injuries and large-scale blinding.

The 'PAVA shells', as per the blueprint prepared in this regard and accessed by PTI, were under trial for over a year at the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) laboratory in Lucknow, and its full development has come at a time when Kashmir is on the boil.

Sources close to the committee said it has favoured 'PAVA shells' as an alternative to pellet guns and has recommended that the Tear Smoke Unit (TSU) of the BSF in Gwalior should be tasked with bulk production of the shells "immediately", with the first lot not of less than 50,000 rounds.

Comments

muthhu
 - 
Monday, 29 Aug 2016

Father uncle cousin king.
Why cant use this in other states . Because they are muslims

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Agencies
August 3,2020

Rajouri, Aug 3: Ashfaq Mehmood Choudhary, a 17-year-old boy from Chattyear of Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district, has developed a file-sharing app 'Dodo Drop' which would enable users to share audios, videos, images, and texts between two devices without Internet access.

While speaking to media persons, Ashfaq Mehmood said that the 'Dodo Drop' application is an alternative to the Chinese 'SHAREit' app. "The Indian government has banned several Chinese apps due to data breaching, and among those apps was SHAREit which was used for sharing files.

Users faced a lot of problems due to the ban, and so I decided to make this file-sharing app. With 'Dodo Drop', users can share audios, videos, images, and even texts," he said.

Ashfaq said that it took him four weeks to develop the application, and it was launched on August 1 this year. The 'Dodo Drop' application has a transfer rate of up to 480 mbps, which is faster than the SHAREit app and is "quite easy" to use.

"Users can transfer data comprising photos, videos, audios, apps, texts, etc. between two devices with no Internet access. The transfers are fully encrypted and secure," he added.

"Our Prime Minister has always asserted the need for decreasing the dependency on foreign products and apps and to focus on the development of India-based apps. I tried to be part of the initiative of 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat' by developing an India-based file-sharing app. I want to develop global-standard apps for India," he added.

"We support and cooperate with him. He generates his own income by working on some projects and utilises it. We will continue to support him," said Parvez Ahmed Choudhary, Ashfaq's father.

In July, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) banned 47 apps, which were variants and cloned copies of the 59 apps banned earlier in June. These banned clones included SHAREit Lite, Tiktok Lite, Helo Lite, BIGO LIVE Lite, and VFY Lite.

The 59 apps had been banned by the Centre in June in view of the information available that they were engaged in activities which were "prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity and defence" of the country.

Almost all the apps banned had some preferential Chinese interest and the majority had parent Chinese companies.

The ban came amid border tensions with China in the Eastern Ladakh region.

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Agencies
January 12,2020

New Delhi, Jan 12: A fact-finding committee of the Congress on the JNU violence on Sunday said the January 5 attack inside the university campus was "state-sponsored" and recommended Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar be dismissed and criminal investigation initiated against him.

The Congress had appointed a four-member fact-finding committee to carry out a detailed inquiry into the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

Sushmita Dev, member of the committee, said the committee recommended that Kumar should be dismissed immediately and all the appointments in faculty should be probed and independent inquiry should take place.

"Criminal investigation must take place against the VC and faculty members and the security company," the Mahila Congress chief said.

"It is clear that the attack on JNU campus was state-sponsored," Dev said.

She also demanded a complete rollback of the JNU fee hike.

The other members of the fact-finding committee are Hibi Eden, MP and former NSUI president, Syed Naseer Hussain, MP and former president of JNU NSUI and Amrita Dhawan, a former NSUI president and ex-DUSU president.

On January 5 night, masked people armed with rods and sticks stormed the JNU campus and assaulted students and faculty members, and vandalised property, leaving several people injured.

Leftist outfits and the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) blamed each other for the violence.

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Agencies
May 19,2020

New Delhi, May 19: Former Union Minister P Chidambaram said that as the fourth phase of the nationwide lockdown amid the coronavirus scare began from Monday, his thoughts were with the people of Kashmir who were in a "terrible lockdown within a lockdown."

The senior Congress leader said that at least now, the people in the rest of India will understand that he dubbed the "enormity of the injustice" done to those who were detained in Kashmir and those still under detention" immediately before and after the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution on August 5, 2019.

Chidambaram said that former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti was the "worst sufferer" of preventive detention and even courts had shirked their constitutional duty with respect to detainees.

"The worst sufferers are Mehbooba Mufti and her senior party colleagues who are still in custody in a locked-down state in a locked-down country. They are deprived of every human right," he said in a statement.

"I cannot believe that for nearly 10 months, the courts will shirk their constitutional duty to protect the human rights of citizens," he added.

The detention on Mehbooba Mufti under the Public Safety Act (PSA) had been extended for three more months on May 5. Booked under the stringent PSA, she was initially kept at the Hari Niwas guesthouse in Srinagar but later shifted to a Tourism Department hut in the Chashma Shahi area.

She was shifted to her Gupkar Road official residence on April 7.

Besides Mehbooba Mufti, two other former Chief Ministers -- Omar Abdullah and his father Farooq Abdullah -- were also detained under the PSA but later released.

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