21 September 2005 :

a one-day strike seeking the lifting of a death sentence on Mohammed Afzal, a man convicted over a deadly 2001 raid on India's parliament, paralysed much of Indian Kashmir, residents said. Most schools, shops, post offices and banks remained closed in the summer capital Srinagar, while little traffic was seen on the roads. The strike also closed down most government and semi-government offices.
The shutdown was also being observed in other major towns in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley like Sopore, residents said.
"Sopore (has) a deserted look as the strike has totally paralysed life," resident Mushtaq Ahmed said by telephone.
The strike was sponsored by both the hardline and moderate factions of the main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference.
India's Supreme Court on August 4 upheld a 2003 high court verdict sentencing Afzal to death for conspiring to stage the raid, in which five gunmen stormed the parliament complex before being slain by security forces.
"The strike is to call for the lifting of the death sentence," Yasin Malik, the head of the pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) said.
In upholding the death sentence, the Supreme Court said there was no doubt about Afzal's complicity in the attack plot.
If he is hanged Afzal would be the second Kashmiri to be executed by India since 1984, when JKLF founder Maqbool Bhat was hanged on charges of murder.