Pakistan halts train service to India, bans films over IoK change

ISLAMABAD/SRINAGAR: Pakistan halted its main train service to India on Thursday and banned Indian films as it exerted diplomatic pressure on New Delhi for revoking the special status of Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK), the region at the heart of 70 years of hostility between them.

Seeking to tighten its grip over the contested region, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government this week withdrew Muslim-majority Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir's right to frame its own laws and allowed people from outside the state to buy property there.

The federal government also broke up the state into two federal territories to allow it greater control, a move that regional leaders said was a further humiliation.

Kashmir remained under a communications blackout on Thursday with mobile networks and internet services suspended and at least 300 politicians and separatists in detention to prevent protests, according to police, media and political leaders.

"Pakistan is looking at political, diplomatic and legal options," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told a news conference in Islamabad, though he ruled out a new military conflict.

"We're not looking at the military option. We're not," he said. The nuclear rivals have twice gone to war over Kashmir and fought an aerial duel in February.

On Thursday, thousands of paramilitary police remained deployed in Kashmir's largest city, Srinagar, schools shut and roads and neighbourhoods barricaded to stop public demonstrations against the sweeping changes.

Security will be even tighter for Friday prayers, police said.