Hundreds of Moslem separatists dressed in death shrouds tried to march to Srinagar on Friday, a day after government troops shot to death 49 Moslems, but soldiers blocked the rally, police said. The march was to have begun in Sumbal, 15 miles north of Srinagar, said a senior police official who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said at least 1,000 Moslems gathered in the town but were stopped by soldiers before they could leave for Srinagar. Witnesses contacted by telephone said the demonstrators had draped themselves in white burial shrouds to show they were willing to die in the fight for secession. A police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at least 49 people died and between 45 and 100 were injured Thursday in two incidents related to the Moslems' campaign. The government said the officers fired in self-defense. The militants want independence for the Moslem-dominated Kashmir region, a part of India's Jammu-Kashmir state. It is the only Moslem-dominated state in India, where the majority of the population is Hindu. The latest shootings prompted authorities to impose an indefinite curfew at 4 a.m. Friday on Sringar, which is the capital, and six other towns. It prevented Moslems from attending the weekly Friday prayers, which in the past have been flashpoints for trouble. Police said one group of separatists defied the curfew and gathered along Dal Lake, but they were chased away by paramilitary troops. An officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said one of the protesters fell to his death in the cold lake. The victim was not identified. The death brought to 162 the number of people killed in Kashmir since the current round of secession-related violence flared Jan. 20 following a government crackdown on Moslem militants. The violence brought criticism from neighboring Pakistan, a Moslem nation that disputes India's right to govern Kashmir. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's government said it condemned the ``brutal Indian response ... to the people of Kashmir, who were asking only for their right of self-determination.'' The Kashmir issue has been a point of contention between Pakistan and India since 1947, following the partition of the old British colonial Asian Subcontinent into two independent nations: mostly Hindu India and overwhelmingly Moslem Pakistan. Kashmir became a subject of dispute because its population was mostly Moslem but its ruler was a Hindu who wanted to join India. A brief war between the two countries left a slice of the valley under Pakistani control and the rest of Kashmir as part of the Indian state of Jammu-Kashmir. A second war in 1965 did not change the situation.
