Fear grips fruit traders after killing

Tribune News Service
Srinagar, October 15

A day after the killing of a non-local truck driver in south Kashmir’s Shopian by suspected militants, a wave of fear has gripped the truck drivers and apple traders as the peak season of trade is on amid mounting tension in Kashmir for the past 70 days.

“Who would want to risk life for taking trucks to south Kashmir villages,” said a truck driver in Pulwama. “We don’t want to take the risk of life,” he added.

Officials from the department of horticulture said apple trade had started picking up well and people were showing an overwhelming response to register themselves with the department and send their crop to outside mandis under different schemes launched by the government since last month. However, they too have apprehensions now that this killing would be a setback to the trade.

“Even our trucks will fear to move. These days 300-400 trucks would go outside the region and people had also started coming forward for trade. But we fear that after this killing, even outside traders will hesitate to come here,” the official said, adding that they were hopeful for the smooth trade for the last few weeks.

Another truck driver said they were already facing the heat of “some people” who were telling them not to carry out the trade activities.

“Many posters had appeared that apple should not be harvested. And in these months, there is usually much movement of apple trucks in all parts of south and north Kashmir but this incident will definitely hit the trade and our movement,” said another driver at the Srinagar fruit mandi who did not want to be named.

A local in Pulwama who owns a few orchards said they were picking up apples amid fear.

“We don’t know who is killing and what is happening. We fear in this situation whether we should go for harvesting the fruit or stop,” he said.