Kashmiri Hindus protest against Geelani, Arundhati at seminar

NEW DELHI - Some Kashmiri Hindu activists created a disturbance as they tried to prevent hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani and author-activist Arundhati Roy from speaking at a seminar here Thursday.

Police, that was already deployed at the seminar venue - LTG Auditorium, whisked away the activists of Panun Kashmir, who were shouting pro-India slogans and waving the national flag at Geelani.

Bedlam ensued at the seminar, organised by The Campaign for Relief of Political Prisoners, as Geelani’s supporters began to raise slogans in his favour and well as for Jammu and Kashmir’s complete independence from India.

Geelani then pacified his supporters, saying their relations with the people of India were based on humanity and they should respect each other’s sentiments even if they differed on ideology.

As Roy, who spoke before Geelani, was giving her speech asking the government not to hold Kashmir against the will of its people, the Panun Kashmir activists threw notebooks and paper missiles at her, demanding to know when they had ever raised the plight of Kashmiri Pandits when they were forced to flee their homes in the Kashmir Valley after the uprising broke out in 1989.