Twenty people were hurt on Friday in fresh clashes in Indian Occupied Kashmir between occupation police and demonstrators demanding clemency for a man sentenced to death for plotting a 2001 attack on parliament, police said.
The occupation police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse the protesters who poured into the streets following Juma prayers shouting, "We want freedom" and "Don't hang Afzal," referring to the man Mohammed Afzal Guru. "Some 20 people have been wounded, seven of them policemen," said a police spokesman.
The region has been rocked by almost daily demonstrations since last week when a judge ordered that Guru be hanged October 20, after the Indian Supreme Court upheld his death sentence for conspiracy in the attack on parliament.
Kashmiris warned last week of "dire consequences" if India executes Guru, 35.
The clashes came after Guru's wife, Tabassum, met Indian President Abdul Kalam in New Delhi on Thursday, accompanied by the couple's seven-year-old son, to plead for mercy for her husband.
"We can now only pray," she said after her meeting with Kalam. The execution now is unlikely to take place on October 20 as a decision by the president usually takes months and sometimes years. According to the constitution, Kalam must seek advice on the appeal from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's cabinet.
Indian human rights activists and newspaper editorials have urged that the sentence be commuted, saying Guru's crimes do not fit "into the rarest of the rare" category which is usually why the death penalty is imposed in India.
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