Transport links: LoC bus service resumes after 13 days

Some 50 passengers from both sides crossed the LoC using the bus

MUZAFFARABAD: The bus service linking Muzaffarabad with Srinagar was allowed to resume operations on Monday some 13 days after it was suspended.

The cross-LoC bus service was flagged off from Muzaffarabad to Chakothi amid tight security. Some 50 passengers from both parts of Kashmir crossed the LoC through the bus.

According to the Travel and Trade Authority (Tata), 28 Indian Kashmir passengers who were stranded in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and 12 others crossed towards the Indian side of the military control line.

“Ten passengers from Indian-administered Kashmir travelled in the Muzaffarabad-Srinagar bus and reached here in AJK,” Tata officials said.

The Intra-Kashmir bus service was suspended after alleged recovery of narcotics in a truck from Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) in Indian-administered Kashmir on February 3. The Indian authorities had arrested the driver Syed Inayat Hussain Shah along with the truck and refused to send him back to the AJK.

The traders, truck drivers and family members of the arrested driver were on strike since Friday in Ghari Dupatta, some 25 kilometres from Muzaffarabad, demanding the release of the driver from the Indian-administered Kashmir and had threatened to stop the cross-LoC movement of buses and trucks. The strike ended yesterday after Tata authorities assured the y would secure the release of Shah from the respective authorities within weeks.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 17^th, 2015.