Jammu & Kashmir police has used popular video-sharing website YouTube to arrest a youth who was allegedly involved in beating up a policeman in Srinagar's old city during this year's summer unrest.
Shadab Hashmi, 18, who is a high school student, was arrested yesterday after police identified him from a video clip posted on YouTube.
The incident of manhandling of the policeman, who was critically injured, had taken place during the protests over the June 11 killing of Tufail Mattoo in tear smoke shelling by police in Gojwara area of the city.
In the video clip, a boy can be seen running after a policeman who is armed with an AK assault rifle. The youth pushes the policeman to the ground, disarms him and beats him.
However, the policeman, constable Mushtaq Ahmad, somehow managed to get hold of his rifle and ran away from the spot.
Ahmad was then posted at the police post in Urdu Bazaar in Srinagar's old city, police said.
They said they had downloaded the video of the incident from the YouTube and identified the boy.
"We had downloaded that clip from Youtube and identified the boy as Shadab Hashmi. His father is from Delhi and was living at Rajouri Kadal. We arrested Shadab yesterday and he has been booked for attempt to murder, kidnap and snatching a weapon," sub-divisional police officer, Khanyar, Parvez Ahmad said.
Police had earlier arrested another youth and booked him under the Public Safety Act for fuelling unrest by posting provocative material on Facebook, a popular social networking website.
Another youth was arrested for publishing the names of top police officers on Facebook but he was released without charge on the assurance of his parents.
This summer the protesters used alternate media like social networking sites and video sharing sites to remain connected and spread the message of dissent.
More than 100 civilians, many of them teenage students, were killed in the Kashmir Valley in the three-month-long summer unrest which began on June 11.
