Srinagar: Five Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) activists were injured when they clashed with police after the separatist outfit's chairman Yaseen Malik was detained along with nine others while taking out a procession to the local office of the UN military observers group on February 6, official sources said.

JKLF activists were going in a procession from its headquarters at Maisuma to the local office of the UN group at Sonawar to submit a memorandum when they were intercepted by police at Badshah Chowk in the heart of the city, they said.

Malik, who was leading the procession, was taken into preventive custody along with his two deputies, Bashir Ahmad Bhat and Javid Ahmad Mir, and seven senior party activists and lodged at Kothibagh police station, the sources said.

Agitated over Malik's detention, JKLF activists indulged in stone-pelting, prompting the police to burst tear gas shells, they said, adding the clashes between the protestors and police lasted for nearly an hour during which five JKLF activists were injured.

One of the injured, Mehraj-ud-din Sheikh, was admitted in a serious condition to the SMHS hospital where doctors are performing a surgery on his hands, the sources said.

Several hundred JKLF protestors took to streets in support of their demand that government should return to Kashmir the mortal remains of party founder Mohammad Maqbool Bhat, who was hanged in Delhi's Tihar jail on February 11, 1984 for killing an Indian diplomat in London.

PTI