CHATTABAL
Come Ramzan and Rahat Manzil gets busy. Home to 500 plus boys, orphaned by militancy, this home attracts thousands of people who contribute for its management and well-being. Home managers do not go and raise donations. During the month of fasting, it is a special attraction for news photographers because here the crisis offers its scale. Last week, Bilal Bahadur and Riyaz-ul-Khaliq broke their fast with the orphans and felt the pain that was in the atmosphere. They saw some seniors missing and many new faces around.
KREERI
Residents locked a state-run middle school after a school teacher molested his sixth standard student. In Sheikhpora village, the ReT teacher Muhammad Ashraf Sofi gave her English question paper in advance to trap her. The family has given the evidence to the government on basis of which Sofi was arrested. The girl had briefed her mother about the teacher that eventually exposed Sofi.
JAMMU
Congress leader Mangat Ram Sharma is still in news. Now he is facing life threat from his son Rajneesh alias Mian. He has sent a formal communication to police detailing how Mian barged into his residence and brandished his revolver and threatened to kill. Sharma’s sons Subash and Rajneesh are engaged in a tense inheritance battle. The latest is that Mangat has disinherited Rajneesh.
UDHAMPUR
A woman was stripped naked by a five member gang at Jaganoo area. They filmed her being beaten and stripped and ensured it goes viral. This, however, forced police to act. So far they have arrested four persons including an army soldier. The accused include Rahul Rajput, Amit, and Jaswinder Singh are residents of Karowa village. Police have already registered a case and the court has refused bail to the accused. It was not known if the statement of their victim, a resident of Panchari, was recorded. She currently lives in Krimchi.
SRINAGAR
Weather conditions are getting trickier. Last week Srinagar city witnessed raining mohalla-wise in such a way as if the kerosene was being rationed. Civil secretariat and old secretariat got rains on two different dates. But it is not just that. Massive snow-melting in Leh created a situation that water entered the town. Currents were so fast and huge that authorities had to plug in breaches to prevent markets get inundated. In Shopian, a cloudburst in a hot midday triggered flash floods. It was same sequence in Kokernag where a flood took away many homes.
ISLAMABAD
Suffering for various ailments for last few years, Sardar Qayoom Khan of Muslim Conference passed away. He was 90. Khan, who was president of PaK for four times and once even Prime Minister, is also known as Mujahid-e-Awal for he fired the first bullet against Maharaja Hari Singhs troops on August 23, 1947, a process that eventually led to the making of PaK. For the last many years, Khan was literally retired from politics and was replaced by his son Sardar Attiq Ahmad Khan. Khan was admitted in a hospital in Islamabad where he breathed his last Friday noon.
MUZAFFARABAD
They may not be talking but the rival armies are helping each other manage smaller issues locally. A day after Indian army sent some PaK boys home, who had inadvertently crossed over, Pakistan responded. On Monday last, they repatriated two teenaged Kashmiri boys, a week after they had inadvertently strayed into PaK. 18 year old Imtiaz and 17 year old Saleem were handed over to Indian army in a flag meeting at Chiliyana (Teetwal). Imtiaz had entered Neelum Valley from Bandipore and Saleem got into Leepa Valley from Karnah.
RAINAWARI
Zulm Ka Marra, the poem that Munawar Ali Hussainy penned a few years ago, got him the rare feat of being Delhi’s Urdu Cultural Academy’s Poet of the Year 2014. Hussainy lives in Hassanabad and is neighbour of Kashmir’s other major poet Zaman Azurdah. Hussainy is young; he passed his twelfth this year and also cracked J&K CET and was selected for BUMS. He has been writing poetry for last many years but when he had to chose his three poems to the academy, he said he chose the best three. “Zulm Ka Mara is a twenty stanza poem describing the life and death of children across Muslim world. It sketches conflict torn life in Kashmir, Palestine, Burma and Syria.”
