Protesters in Indian-administered Kashmir have seized the body of a second civilian who was allegedly shot wrongfully by the security forces. Thousands of people, many armed with batons and chanting slogans against the police, briefly took away the body.On Thursday a similar incident involving a dead civilian took place. The bodies have been exhumed in a probe into claims that police are fabricating clashes with militants as an excuse to carry out extra-judicial killings. The body of the second civilian, Nazir Ahmed Deka, was seized as it was being dug up his grave in the Ganderbal area near the summer capital Srinagar on Friday afternoon.
Mr Deka's family say he went missing last February from outside a school in Srinagar where he sold perfumes on a footpath. The security forces said that he was a member of the Lashkar-e-Toiba militant group.
The BBC's Altaf Hussain in Srinagar says that 3,000 protesters overran the cemetery as the exhumation was taking place. They demanded a "public hanging" of the officials who they said were responsible for the staged gun battles.
Our correspondent says that the protesters took away the body as helpless police looked on. The Deputy Inspector General of Police, Farooq Ahmed Bhat, told reporters that his officers could not collect samples from the body for DNA testing. But Mr Bhat later said that the body was returned to them. He said that an investigating team was probing four cases of staged encounters in which civilians had been killed.
On Thursday, the body of Abdul Rehman Paddar was also snatched by protesters as it was being exhumed.
Two policemen have been arrested for killing Mr Paddar. He was killed by the anti-militancy task force in the Sumbal area in December. Police said that he was a leading militant.
The authorities now believe that Mr Paddar paid 80,000 rupees (nearly $2,000) to a policeman in order to get a government job. But it is suspected that the policeman arranged for him to be killed.