Stone pelting in Kashmir

In Pakistan, military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq who implemented Sharia law reconstituted a court, which declared rajm as Islamic.

Kashmiri senior journalist Parvaiz Bukhari remarked:[12]The summer of 2010 witnessed a convulsion in the world's most militarized zone, the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, an unprecedented and deadly civil unrest that is beginning to change a few things on the ground.

[...] Little known and relatively anonymous resistance activists emerged, organizing an unarmed agitation more fierce than the armed rebellion against Indian rule two decades earlier.

And apparently aware of the post 9/11 world, young Kashmiris, children of the conflict, made stones and rocks a weapon of choice against government armed forces, side-stepping the tag of a terrorist movement linked with Pakistan.

The unrest represents a conscious transition to an unarmed mass movement, one that poses a moral challenge to New Delhi's military domination over the region.Journalist Malini Parthasarathy says that stone pelting is driven by the brutal killings of Kashmiri youth at the hands of Indian forces.

The Special Director General (SDGP) of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) N K Tripathi stated that since the militancy related activities have declined in the region, "a new form of gunless terrorism in the shape of stone-pelting has emerged in Kashmir", "It is being funded by Pakistan and its agencies through Over Ground Workers (sympathizers of militants) and hawala channels" with an objective to disturb the peace in Kashmir and India.

He added that "There are a large number of instances of unprovoked stone-pelting by hostile mobs on CRPF that has left 1500 jawans injured and close to 400 vehicles damaged in the last one-and-a-half year" (2009-10).

As per the report, the funds supplied by the ISI were used to pay off stone-pelters and petrol bomb throwers, and also to propagate anti-India and anti-security forces sentiments in the Valley.

[22][23] On 25 October 2018, an Indian Army soldier was killed after sustaining head injuries in a stone pelting incident in Anantnag district of South Kashmir.

An army spokesperson said that Sepoy Rajendra Singh was part of a "Quick Reaction Team" that was providing security to a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) convoy.

[24] Following the event Army Chief General Bipin Rawat said that stone pelters are like terrorists and must be dealt with sternly, repeating his earlier stand that the stone-pelters are nothing but over ground workers of terror outfits, "I still say the same...