Police lobbed teargas shells to scatter protesters in Kashmir yesterday on the fourth straight day of protests against the alleged rape of a young girl and her mother by an Indian soldier. The reported sexual assault by an army major, as well as a row between the interior ministry and political separatists, has created a storm ahead of a planned trip by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh next week.

“India is using rape as a war weapon,” Asiya Andrabi, chief of the Dukhtaran-e-Milat, a Kashmiri women’s separatist group, said in a statement. “The Handwara incident is not an isolated incident.” The alleged rape took place in Handwara town, 80 km (50 miles) north of Srinagar, summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, while troops were searching the woman’s home.

Yesterday, some of the hundreds of protesters who gathered in the heart of Srinagar threw stones at police who retaliated by picking up them up and throwing them back. “The Indians are not sincere. On one hand, they are talking of peace and, at the same time, they are raping our mothers and sisters,” protester Mohammad Yunis said, tears in his eyes from the acrid smoke of teargas. Police in Kashmir said they were investigating the accusation, with the rape said to have taken place over the weekend, while the Indian army has ordered its own probe, promising tough action if the accusations are found to be true.

But tempers have also been raised in the run-up to Singh’s trip – his first to Kashmir since he became prime minister in May – by a statement the home ministry made during Minister Shivraj Patil’s visit to the region on Sunday. The ministry said Kashmiri political separatists were under pressure from Pakistan not to engage in talks with New Delhi unless Islamabad was included in the dialogue. Separatists issued an angry denial, as did Islamabad, and the row threatens to further delay the stalled talks process.

The Indian Express newspaper suggested Singh would postpone his visit in the light of the twin controversies, but the Prime Minister’s Office told Reuters he would go to Kashmir on November 17 and 18 as scheduled. A 15-year-revolt by Muslim separatist insurgents has killed tens of thousands of people in Kashmir since 1989. Violence has waned but not stopped since a peace process between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan began last year. The South Asian neighbours have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir and came close to another war in 1999 and 2002.

<B>Sheikh Mushtaq</B>