Mysterious Blaze

With 26 schools going up in flames in 113 days of civil uprising, the question everyone seems asking is, who is setting schools afire, reports Syed Asma

Hanfia school of Islamabad up in flames. (Photo: Aakash Hassan/KL)

September 19, 2016 was one of the 100 days of lockdown. A routine uneasy calm was prevalent in seething south’s Islamabad as heavy police and paramilitary deployment was all over the area. It was then flames erupted.

Housed in a 92-year-old building in Islamabad, Hanfiya Model School went up in flames. The entire locality in Islamabad’s Lal Chowk tried to fight the fire but nothing much could be salvaged.

One of three blocks of the school was gutted down in a few hours. The building was entirely made of wood and after September 2014 floods, it was renovated and was recently painted. School administration believes it to be the reason that it didn’t take fire much time to gut down the entire building.

“Fire erupted in the upper storey of the building,” says Fayaz Ahmed Rather, the administrator of the trust running the school. Fayaz, resident of Ashmuqam in Islamabad, reached the site an hour after the fire erupted. He says he is not sure about the reasons and circumstances that triggered the fire. Police have registered a case and investigations are on. So far, short circuit is said to be the reason behind the flame, but exist many other versions.

One of them is that there was a heavy deployment of forces on the roads and public movement was strictly restricted that day. “And there were no protests or clashes in the area,” says a local. “May be someone from establishment set it on fire just to add to the costs that we are paying.” Another version being popularised by certain sections shifts blame on a “gang of drug addicts hyperactive” in that area.

Government Higher Secondary School Kaba Marg Islamabad set ablaze by unknown persons on Oct 30, 2016. (KL Image: Shah Hilal)

Similarly, Govt Middle School at Batingo went up in flames for some unknown reasons. That day when a boy from Batingo was killed and a huge procession of people was heading towards the graveyard for his funeral, troops fired pellets and tear smoke shells, says Irfan, a local. “One of the tear gas hit the roof of the school and it caught fire.”

It never stopped after that. One by one 26 schools were set afire by “unknown miscreants”— as the police statements term it. Of them, 22 were government-run, three private and one Jawahar Navodaya Vidyayala. While 11 were fully damaged, the rest were partially damaged. In view of unabated torching, state education minister Naeem Akhtar said, if possible, he would gladly post security for 20,000 schools. “This is people’s property,” Akhtar said, “and society has to rise up to the challenge.”

Unlike 2010, when attacks on buildings would happen during daytime, most structures were smoked up in the dark this time around. One such structure was Government Middle School Kachdora, Shopian. Like in other cases, the trigger remains yet to be ascertained.

Making the trend of damaging school buildings a bit stronger, many other government schools were gutted down, like High School in Naseerabad, Kulgam. Believed to be the oldest school in the area, the school wasn’t attacked for the first time. “It was earlier gutted down in 1996,” says Saleem Ahmed, a local. “And now again, it became a cog in the larger firing wheel.”

Iqra English Medium Public School Batagund Veerinag set ablaze on Oct 28, 2016 by anti-social elements. (KL Image: Shah Hilal)

Police have registered FIRs in all the incidents and almost all their reports read that the “unknown miscreants” have set the government building on fire. If not by the tear smoke shell, which police say, “only emits smoke and not fire”, the schools were consumed by mysterious trigger.

Witnessing one such incident, Chowkidar of Higher Secondary School Bugam, says last month two masked men tried to set the school afire. But his vigilance foiled their attempts. “They ran away,” he says. “I don’t know who they were.”

Many in Bugam sniff a larger ploy at play. The masked men who torch schools are giving bad name to the present uprising, they say: “Had they been locals, why would they target the buildings during night?”

The locals assert that whenever they plan to target anything, they go in huge processions and usually attack during daytime. “Kashmir is a complex conflict,” said a local. “What adds to its complexity is the number of government and intelligence agencies working to malign the resistance movement.”

While this copy was about to get printed, another school, this time from Verinag, Islamabad, was burned down. As government remains clueless over the firing pattern, charred classrooms continue to pile up to everyone’s chagrin.

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