Why are Kashmiris disappearing from WhatsApp amid internet shutdown?

The locals who disappeared from the platform have long been active participants in Whatsapp groups sharing news and updates. No one was quite sure of what was happening.

It's been exactly four months since internet services were snapped in Kashmir. Even as Kashmiris continue to endure the shutdown, on Wednesday, they began vanishing in large numbers from the social media platform WhatsApp, Buzzfeed reported.

The locals who disappeared from the platform have long been active participants in Whatsapp groups sharing news and updates. No one was quite sure of what was happening.

“I thought that internet services had been restored in Kashmir and maybe these people were just removing themselves from WhatsApp groups on their own,” Mudasir Firdosi, a London-based Kashmiri doctor who is in half a dozen WhatsApp groups told Buzzfeed.

A Facebook spokesperson told Buzzfeed that the disappearances were the result of WhatsApp's policy on inactive accounts. "To maintain security and limit data retention, WhatsApp accounts generally expire after 120 days of inactivity," he said. "When that happens, those accounts automatically exit their WhatsApp groups. People will need to be re-added to groups upon regaining access to the Internet and joining WhatsApp again."

Suhail Lyser, a Kashmiri student from Dehradun, told BuzzFeed News that he saw more than 150 Kashmiris in a WhatsApp group suddenly disappear from the group. But according to another Kashmiri doctor who lives in New Delhi, people using WhatsApp due to their travels outside the state found their accounts intact.

Facebook has so far been silent on the number of Kashmiris affected. People whose accounts became extinct will have to register afresh with WhatsApp and recreate their profiles.

On August 5, India revoked the special status to Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcated the state into two Union territories, following which all communication lines were blocked. India is the largest market for WhatsApp with some 400 million active users.

Business Standard

What kind of petition is this? SC on pleas against Article 370 revocation

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said the petition by advocate M L Sharma challenging the scrapping of Article 370 has "no meaning".

The Supreme Court on Friday expressed anguish over "defective" petitions challenging scrapping of provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said the petition by advocate M L Sharma challenging the scrapping of Article 370 has "no meaning".

"What kind of petition is this? It could have been dismissed but there are 5 other pleas with the registry," the bench also comprising S A Bobde and S A Najeer said.

"You are not praying for setting aside the Presidential order. What is the prayer it is not clear. It can be dismissed on technical grounds," the bench said and added that there were five other petitions in the registry which are defective.

The CJI said he spent 30 minutes reading the petition on Article 370 but could not make out anything.

The apex court asked lawyers to cure defects in their six petitions on Article 370 and adjourned the hearing.

The bench also noted that it was hearing the petition on Article 370 by breaking the combination of judges hearing the sensitive Ayodhya matter.

Business Standard

Pellet guns have killed 24, blinded 139 in Kashmir since 2010: Report

According to Union Home ministry, pellet guns, tear gas and chilli-filled shells are considered as non-lethal weapons for controlling crowd during protests.

Violent protests in Kashmir are quelled using what the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) describes as ‘non-lethal’ crowd-control measures. These include pellet guns, tear gas and chilli-filled shells (containing PAVA or pelargonic acid vanillyl amide, found in chillies).

But these munitions are far from non-lethal, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of MHA data and Srinagar hospital records.

We found that:

Tear-gas shells killed five between January 2010 and May 2019, and injured 176 between July 2016 and February 2019.

Chilli-filled shells killed one and caused respiratory problems in 51 of 294 respondents (non-combatants) surveyed for a medical study in downtown Srinagar. Of them, 97% developed cough and irritation within few seconds of breathing the gas.

Metal pellets have killed 18, blinded 139, injured 2,942 and caused eye injuries to 1,459 between July 2016 and February 2019.

Over 100,000 tear gas canisters and almost 50,000 rounds of chilli spray have been used in over 4,000 incidents of stone-pelting in different parts of Kashmir since 2010, a senior security official who did not wish to be named told IndiaSpend. This situation worsened after July 2016 when militant commander, Burhan Wani, was shot dead by forces. There are no figures available on the use of pellets.

Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International have expressed outrage over the crowd control methods used in Kashmir and demanded a ban on these, especially pellets, which have blinded victims.

While the impact of pellets on victims has been documented extensively, there are few reports available on the effects of tear gas and chilli spray. We found in our investigations that these gases, which spread quickly, cause widespread damage to the health of those exposed. Those affected are not just those targeted by the forces but also passersby and those at home in the vicinity of the protest. Inhaling these gases causes paroxysms of cough and burning in the eyes, victims told us.

These accounts were confirmed by a May 2014 study published by Parvaiz Koul, professor and head of department, internal medicine at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) in Srinagar, and his colleagues at the department of internal and pulmonary medicine.

Business Standard