She'd never hurt so much as a fly in her life. But on April 24, Jammu & Kashmir's most promising woman soccer player, Afshan Ashiq, joined the growing crowd of angry stone-throwers in the Valley.

Eyewitnesses at Srinagar's Lal Chowk, where scores of students clashed with police and paramilitary personnel to protest against the police action that left over 50 students at Pulwama's Government Degree College injured on April 13, recall Ashiq unleashing a volley of stones at the security forces.

Afshan, who's been devoted to football and was recently hired as J&K's first ever woman soccer coach, says she was escorting a group of 16 students from the Kothi Bagh Girls School for practice at the far end of Residency Road. "We were stopped by some policemen. They started abusing me mistaking us for being a part of the protest," she says, recalling how things rapidly deteriorated when "one of the cops slapped a young schoolgirl who objected to his use of expletives".

Infuriated at the policeman's behaviour, Afshan says she felt she had to do something. "I don't remember really thinking about the consequences," she says. After getting the schoolgirls to a safer distance, she almost automatically picked up a stone and hurled it at the policemen, not aiming for anyone in particular.

Images of the lanky, 5 feet 8 inches tall footballer, uncharacteristically draped in a dupatta, and pelting stones, went viral on the vestiges of social media still functioning in Kashmir following the state government's decision, on April 26, to block social media forums such as WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube.

Ironically, Afshan is not your regular stone-pelter. She had earlier spent hours counselling young male friends on the perils of breaking the law. "I tell them to take up a sport and study hard because that is the only ticket to freedom and the world outside," she says.

But what happened to her and dozens of other young college and schoolgirls on the day of the protests at Lal Chowk and several similar skirmishes across the Valley's towns, points to a blurring of lines amongst the generation of 12-24 year olds.

A senior state police officer says that although significantly reduced compared to the unrest last year, the continuing violent protests across Kashmir, in the absence of any attempt to politically or socially engage with young people, eventually smudge distinctions between radicalised youth demonstrating on the streets and unlikely new participants like Afshan.

Girls in headscarves and school uniforms are becoming the disturbing, alternative image of the Kashmiri stone-thrower. Like 18-year-old Nisha Zahoor, a Class 12 student from a government school in Navakadal, Downtown Srinagar.

On April 20, Zahoor and her classmates fought pitched battles with CRPF personnel over rumours that Iqra Sadiq, a student at the neighbouring Government Girls College, had died from a grievous skull injury sustained in stone-pelting a day earlier.

Schoolgirls throw stones at security forces in Srinagar. Schoolgirls throw stones at security forces in Srinagar.

Many of them have suffered personal losses in the ongoing violence. Zahoor's uncle was reportedly killed during the 2016 unrest, and Ishrat Bashir, another twelfth-grader at the Navakadal school lost a 16-year-old brother.

At the Kothi Bagh police station, Afshan's name figures on an FIR that also describes grievous injuries sustained by policemen, including a young IPS officer with a cracked skull and a clot in his brain. Police officers contend that "girl students who until now were only involved in bringing stones to youth attacking security personnel are now actively participating themselves".

At a meeting of PDP functionaries on April 24, Tassaduq Mufti, chief minister Mehbooba Mufti's brother and party candidate for the cancelled Anantnag Lok Sabha by-election, is said to have angrily told the senior leaders present: "We talk of dialogue with all stakeholders and reconciliation with Pakistan, yet were are not even able to go out and talk to our own young people who are out on the streets!"