Pakistan halted its main train service to India on Thursday and banned Indian films as it sustained diplomatic pressure on New Delhi for revoking the special status of Kashmir, the region at the heart of 70 years of hostility between them.
This week saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government withdraw Muslim majority Jammu and Kashmir’s right to frame its own laws and allowed people from outside the region to buy property there in a bid to tighten its grip over the contested region.
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.
Kashmir’s leaders have warned of a backlash and Pakistan, which also lays claims to the territory, vowed to fight for the rights of people living there.
Islamabad said on Wednesday it would expel India’s ambassador to Pakistan and its envoy, who was to start his assignment soon, would not move to New Delhi as planned.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist led government, which has long campaigned for an end to Kashmir’s special status, said it would split the state into two federal territories that the region’s leaders labeled a further humiliation.
Thousands of paramilitary police have been deployed in Kashmir’s largest city, Srinagar, schools shut and roads and neighborhoods barricaded.
Tens of thousands of people have died in the armed revolt to secede from India that erupted in 1989.
