Police in Indian Kashmir have detained 144 children, including a nine-year-old, since early August when the government revoked the disputed region\u2019s special status and imposed a lockdown, according to a court-appointed committee\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
But all those arrested and lodged in police stations were released on the same day, police told the Jammu and Kashmir High Court\u2019s four-member Juvenile Justice Committee.<\/p>\n
The Committee had been asked by India\u2019s Supreme Court to look into allegations of child detentions after a petition filed by two activists last month.<\/p>\n
As of Sept. 25, only two children, both aged 17 years, were lodged in juvenile homes, said the committee\u2019s Sept. 26 report, which was reviewed by Reuters on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The detention of children spans the whole of the Kashmir valley, from Sopore in the north to the southern district of Shopian, with a large number from the region\u2019s main city of Srinagar, according to the justice committee\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
Some children are listed as having been taken under preventive detention, while others have been held for various criminal offences, including disturbing public tranquillity.<\/p>\n
In a letter to the committee that was included in the report, Kashmir\u2019s police chief said that the charges of illegal child detentions had no merit, but children found to be in violation of the law were being \u201cstrictly dealt\u201d with.<\/p>\n
Children had been lured into violent acts by \u201cbeing used as a shield by some vested interests,\u201d police said, and some were involved in stone-pelting, rioting and causing damage to public and private property, as per their investigation.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s government has maintained an iron grip on Jammu and Kashmir, India\u2019s only Muslim-majority state, which is also claimed by Pakistan, since August, deploying thousands of troops, restricting movement, and snapping communications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Police in Indian Kashmir have detained 144 children, including a nine-year-old, since early August when the government revoked the disputed region\u2019s special status and imposed a lockdown, according to a court-appointed committee\u2019s report. But all those arrested and lodged in police stations were released on the same day, police told the Jammu and Kashmir High […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,1467,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india","category-kashmir","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10164,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10162\/revisions\/10164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}