Don't let another Shopian happen, request school children

School children from Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir that witnessed widespread violence after the alleged rape and murder of two women have only one request -- "don't allow such incidents to happen again."

"Nothing has been found till now in Shopian case. Why did people create so much of hue and cry about it? We urge our seniors and elders that they should not let this happen again," Sameer Ahmed, a class IX student of Army Goodwill Public School, Shopian said.

Ahmed is among the 35 students from Shopian who visited the Rashtrapati Bhavan here today. "During the Shopian agitation, our schools were closed for at least two months. I could not meet my friends, could not go out. In a place like Kashmir, school is the only way for us to meet each other which we missed a lot.

"The accountability should be fixed so that these incidents never happen again," said Arshida Manzoor. Another student Ishrat Jahan said they had to face a lot of hardships during the agitation. "Telephone lines were not working. Electricity was snapped. We were cut off from the world during the agitation."

The group, including 15 girls, is on a 13-day trip during which they will visit Agra, Jaipur and Ajmer, besides Delhi. The tour, which began on November 8, is organised by the Army under its operation 'Sadbhavna' to enable the children to visit various parts of the country for educational purposes and make them aware about various other cultures.