For perhaps the first time in the valley, Monday's killing of two sisters by suspected militants sparked protests and shutdown in Sopore and a demonstration by a separatist women's group in Srinagar on Friday.

The strike shut down Sopore completely. All shops and businesses were closed. Scores of women took to streets in Muslim Peer, the locality where the sisters lived, and Chinkipora, demanding identification and punishment of the killers. It was a spectacle the town  a separatist and militant bastion  had never witnessed.

The call for shutdown was given by hardline Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah Geelani, whose role in mobilising protests against alleged excesses by security forces left him with little option but to condemn the killings. Geelani also sent a delegation, led by Hurriyat spokesman Ayaz Akbar, to the town.

"We visited the family to offer our condolences," Akbar told The Indian Express. "And we let everybody there know that Hurriyat condemns these brutal killings."

Akbar stressed that the delegation went to the town on the instructions of Geelani. "Whatever the guilt, nobody has the authority to kill a human being. And we condemn the killings even if militants are found to be behind them."

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