Clash at Mattan between two minority communities, several injured

Mir Iqbal
Srinagar, July 13: Tension gripped Mattan town today after clashes broke out between members of two minority communities in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district over a land dispute in which some people received minor injuries.
The scuffle took place between them after one group objected the other for replacing its religious flag on the pole.
Eye witnesses said that members of Sikh community started assembling since morning to hoist the religious flag, but Pandit community members objected to it.
They said the angry members after entering into verbal dual pelted stones at each other till police and CRPF reached the spot to maintain law and order.
Some of the members of both the communities received minor injuries in the stone pelting incident, while few got injured in police baton charge.
The locals said both the communities have their religious places here on opposite banks of famous Mattan spring and it has been a ritual for centuries to replace religious flag, but it was from last year that something wrong was going between two communities.
A top police officer told Excelsior that Sikhs have three rooms here and they assembled early in the morning to replace their old flag, but Pandits objected it.
But members of Pandit community said that Sikhs have encroached their temple land, while as Sikhs disputed their claims saying that the Gurudwara situated here is one of the oldest in Kashmir.
Mattan Temple Trust President, M K Yogi told Excelsior that the land dispute was in the Supreme Court and it ordered that Sikhs can’t renovate or construct anything here, but they only can use their present property.
The Pandits later on hoisted black flags in their temples and locked their main gates as a mark of protest against police high handedness and failure of civil administration to protect them.
P N Pandit, Senior Vice President of Displaced Kashmiri Front while talking to Excelsior said that it was a conspiracy to sabotage the return of Pandits in Valley.
“We don’t know whose hands are behind it, but something wrong is going on,” he said.
Terming the dispute a conspiracy against the Sikhs, Jagmohan Singh Raina, President All Party Sikh Coordination Committee said that there are some selected Pandits creating trouble with “peace loving Sikhs, who have set an example of brotherhood for last 25 years despite turmoil.”
Meanwhile, chairman Martand Charitable Trust R.N Koul has dissolved the organisation and diverted all office bearers including its President of the Sanstha.

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