SRINAGAR/JAMMU: With separatists suspending their strike call for three days, life in Kashmir Valley, disrupted for over a week due to the agitation over "economic blockade", limped back towards normalcy.
But in Jammu region, thousands of protesters, including women in good numbers, courted arrest in various police station areas for the second day to press their demand for return of 100 acres of land to Amarnath shrine board.
Schools, shops, business establishments and offices opened in the Valley as the Coordination Committee -- an amalgam of separatists, social organizations, traders' and employees' bodies -- decided to suspend the strike for three days. Vehicles were plying in Srinagar and other areas on city and inter-district routes, official sources said.
The separatists had announced the suspension of the strike call to provide relief to students, laborers and other sections of the society who were hit by the shutdown. However, vehicles and business establishments perched black flags atop their buildings as a mark of protest and in support of the demands of the separatist groups.
The separatists had launched the agitation on August 11 demanding the opening of Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road to end the "economic blockade" of the Valley in the wake of the shrine land stir. As many as 22 people were killed during the protests and in police firing.
The separatists have called for 'march to Eidgah' in downtown city on Friday when they will announce their future course of action. Protesters, who included women, raised slogans of "bam bam bholey" and marched to police station in Jammu region as part of the three-day "jail bharo' agitation called by the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti (SASS).