Forces ‘Went Amok’ in Kashmir

Indian police admitted Thursday that paramilitary security forces killed 53 people and torched scores of buildings in the Kashmir town of Sopore in revenge for an attack by anti-Indian militants.

“The security forces went amok,” Senior Police Supt. S. Sahay told reporters over the noise of curfew-defying protests by hundreds of people against Wednesday’s mayhem. A senior local government official said that all those killed were civilians.

Sahay said the official government version issued Wednesday--that most people were killed in cross-fire between militants and security forces and that the explosion of a militants’ arms dump caused the fires--was untrue.

Sahay said that men of the paramilitary Border Security Force went on the rampage in retaliation for an attack by militants on one of their bunkers in Sopore in which one trooper was killed. He said security men deliberately set houses and shops ablaze.

The government promised an investigation.

Separatists have been campaigning for the past four decades to set up an Islamic nation in Kashmir. More than 5,600 people have been killed since the movement turned violent three years ago.