Families of 3 young men organized a protest to condemn the killing of their sons at the hands of Indian security forces in Srinagar, the capital of the disputed Kashmir region with Pakistan, while the authorities refused to hand over the bodies for fear of protests.
The families of the three young men say their sons left their homes on December 29 to submit admission forms to study, while the police claim that they were assisting gunmen demanding independence, and were killed in an exchange of fire, on the outskirts of Srinagar.
The police initially issued a statement saying that the three were not mentioned in their records of the militants, but later said they were helping the militants with logistical services, and a number of pro-India political parties called for an impartial investigation.
The families of the young men are demanding that they hand over the bodies of their loved ones so that they can be buried in their cemeteries, but since March of last year the police have stopped handing over the bodies of those they say are armed or their assistants under the pretext that their funerals attract large crowds that immediately turn into pro-freedom marches, so the police resort to burying them in Remote villages, often during the evening, in the presence of their parents and a few of their relatives.
The Indian-controlled part of Kashmir has witnessed resistance operations since 1989, led by groups against what it considers an Indian occupation, and India and Pakistan have fought two wars over the region out of 3 wars between them since the division of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.