Mubashir Aalam Wani
Srinagar, Nov 05 (KNO): Fear continues to grip the street vendors, a day after the grenade blast left one non-Kashmiri dead and 40 others injured at Hari Singh High Street (HSHS) in Srinagar as they preferred not to set up stalls in the area.
Eye-witnesses told wire service Kashmir News Observer (KNO) that HSHS area in the commercial Hub Lal chowk was witnessing a brisk presence of street vendors with shoppers across the district thronging the market to buy essentials and other stuff.
However, the second grenade blast in the area post August 5, triggered a fresh wave of panic among the street vendors who gave a ‘big miss’ to the area. “There is a lot of fear since yesterday’s episode. So today, we decided not to setup stalls,” said Abdur Rashid, a vendor.
Today, the area wore a deserted look while the pedestrians were moving freely. Unlike other days, the shopkeepers in Goni Khan area of HSHS said that they downed their shutters precisely at 10:00 AM due to the fear of yesterday’s incident. “We closed our shops at around 10: 00 am.
We don’t want to face the similar situation that we faced yesterday,” a shopkeeper while talking to KNO said. Pertinently, amid uncertainty in Kashmir, the shopkeepers open their shops only for few hours in the morning and observe spontaneous shutdown for rest of the day.
The uncertainty began on August 5, when the central government announced the abrogation of special status of Jammu and Kashmir (Article 370) and bifurcation of erstwhile State into two Union Territories. Nonetheless, the private vehicular movement in Srinagar including the commercial Hub Lal Chowk plied normally while public transport continued to remain off the roads. (KNO)
