Srinagar July 6: Shops and businesses today remained closed in the city to protest against the burning down of the region’s oldest school, run by the family of Mirwaiz Umer Farooq.

The 115-year-old Islamia Higher Secondary School, run by the Mirwaiz-headed Anjumane Nasratul Islam, was gutted in a fire yesterday at Rajouri Kadal in downtown Srinagar.

A strike called by the chief priest of Kashmir, the Mirwaiz, also closed down most educational institutions in the city.

“I believe it is the handiwork of the same forces who eliminated my uncle, Moulvi Mushtaq. We know them closely and shall expose them shortly,” the Mirwaiz, a top leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, told the Greater Kashmir newspaper. Moulvi Mushtaq Ahmad died in an attack by suspected militants last month.

The Mirwaiz is part of a moderate group of Hurriyat leaders who started talks with the Centre in January, for the first time since trouble erupted in Jammu and Kashmir in 1989. Hardline militants do not support the talks. Police also suspect hardline militants for the alleged arson attack.

The police said the fire started early in the morning and engulfed the whole complex, situated near the headquarters of the Awami Action Committee of the Mirwaiz. The fire also destroyed about 30,000 books and a rare handwritten manuscript of the Quran.

The school, which had the most modern library and laboratory facilities in the region, was built by the Mirwaiz family during the Dogra Maharaja rule in 1889 in Kashmir.