J&K: Home Delivery Businesses Say Police Drive to Seize Two-Wheelers Hitting Them Hard

Srinagar: Various businesses dealing in home delivery of products and services have alleged the police drive to seize two-wheelers in Kashmir over the past three days has severely affected their operations.

The residents of the city have alleged that the middle class, lower-middle class and students have been badly affected by the police drive and many have decided to keep their two-wheelers parked at their homes.

"Our operations continue to be at halt due to incessant seizing of our delivery bikes in the city," tweeted Samiullah, the co-founder of Fastbeetle -- a startup which deals in the last mile delivery of products.

In a series of tweets, he said just when the businesses in Kashmir were trying to recover from the losses caused in the aftermath of the abrogation of Article 370 and the COVID-19 pandemic, the law and order management was "crushing" the business community.

"More than 500 delivery executives are making their livelihoods from delivery jobs in Kashmir, where would they go now?" he asked.

The company through its Twitter handle on Thursday urged cooperation of its patrons.

"Amid this grim situation, we're trying our best to deliver our services howsoever possible. But, our operations have affected badly due to the continuous seizing of two-wheelers

"We've been with you always, trying amid this situation too but we need ur support. Please be cooperative," it said.

Samiullah said such situations put a question mark on the very efforts of the government to attract foreign investment.

"I wonder how on one hand the foreign investing parties are invited day in and day out to plan the possibilities in Kashmir and the local startups are pulled down with these unnecessary maintenance activities on the other hand," he added.

Mohammad Aslam, who is into courier business, said the parcels purchased online by residents of Srinagar are piling up in godowns as delivery executives are not able to move around freely.

"If the situation continues like this for few days more, big e-commerce companies will stop taking online orders from the affected pin codes," he added.

The police have said the drive was part of route anti-militancy operations but did not comment on the large scale seizures of these vehicles in the city.

Some social media users linked the police action to the likely visit of Union Home Minister Amit Shah to the valley this weekend.

However, police denied any such link.

"Seizing some bikes and shutting down of internet of some towers is purely related to #terror #violences. It has nothing to do with visit of the Hon'ble HM," IGP Kashmir zone Vijay Kumar tweeted on Thursday.

The internet services on a dozen towers -- mostly in the areas where non-local labourers were killed in the past week -- were snapped three days ago while police have started stringent checking of documents of two-wheelers plying on the roads.

However, many riders have alleged their two-wheelers were seized by police without even checking the documents and were asked to collect their vehicles after October 26.