Two photojournalists on Tuesday blamed the J&K Police for pounding them while they were covering a trade of fire among activists and the forces in Marwal town of Pulwama in South Kashmir.

One of them, Kamran Yousuf, said that he had been detained  for further investigation at the Bone and Joint Hospital in Srinagar. Yousuf works for a New Delhi-based online news distribution network, Newsclick. The other photojournalist supposedly beaten was Faisal Bashir.

The police said they had just kept individuals from going close to the encounter site as that would have imperiled their security. In a tweet J&K police stated that some media people had endeavored to move close, and were appropriately stopped.

Yousuf said that they were around 300 meters from the encounter site. He said that they had hardly taken the cameras out when the CRPF staff told them to step back. As they were moving back, around eight cops jumped on them. They kicked and beat him with lathis and firearms as claimed by Yousuf.

In an announcement, the Kashmir Editors’ Guild said that the police ought to be  answerable about the activities carried out on the media and asked Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha to investigate the issue.