SRINAGAR - A strike in Indian Kashmir to protest against the deaths of two young women whose families allege were raped and killed by security forces paralysed life for a third day Wednesday.
The strike closed shops, schools, banks and offices in the summer capital Srinagar and other towns in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley and police kept a tight watch on protesters.

Police said they were investigating the deaths of the 17-year-old woman and her 22-year-old sister-in-law, whose bodies were found in a shallow stream last Saturday.

Their families said the corpses bore marks of violence and their clothes were torn.

They have accused Indian security forces fighting a two-decade-old separatist insurgency in the scenic Himalayan region of abducting, raping and killing the women.

But the state government said according to initial investigations, the deaths appeared to have been caused by drowning and no foul play was involved.

A judicial probe has been ordered by chief minister Omar Abdullah, but it has failed to cool tempers.

Kashmir's separatist political leadership remained under house arrest, which was imposed last Saturday, and streets were deserted as the security forces patrolled.

Police and paramilitary forces have also sealed some neighbourhoods with barbed wire in Srinagar, a separatist hub, and southern Shopian town, where the deaths were reported.

The move was a bid to prevent protests from erupting into violence, police said.

"We are restricting civilian movement to prevent violence," police officer Pervez Ahmed said as police struggled to control a clutch of protesters who had emerged from their houses to burn an effigy of chief minister Abdullah.
Since Saturday, more than 150 people have been injured in clashes between police and demonstrators in Shopian and Srinagar.

Anti-Indian sentiment runs deep in the Kashmir valley and even the suspicion of violence against locals, especially women, is enough to stir major demonstrations.