Srinagar, Oct. 5: Some of the city’s most violent trouble spots today had a pleasant makeover.

The CRPF started removing some of the most heavily guarded bunkers from Srinagar today, a move aimed at reducing footprints of the troopers in perhaps one of the most militarised cities in the country.

The decision came as 110 people, mostly teenagers, lost their lives and hundreds more were injured in the worst unrest since 1990 and is part of a slew of measures announced by the state government recently to restore calm in the Valley.

The Omar Abdullah-government is removing 16 bunkers from the city — eight of which were done away with today — that have witnessed countless attacks by militants in the past 20 years, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction.

“All these bunkers were residential pickets wherein soldiers lived round the clock. The men deployed in these bunkers shall return to their bases,” Prabhakar Tripathy, a CRPF spokesperson, said in Srinagar.

For the local people, the bunkers have left behind memories that are not easy to forget. “The bunker in our locality is as old as militancy. I don’t know how many times it was attacked and how many people died around or near it,” said Mohammad Aslam, a resident of Magarmal Bagh in Srinagar’s civil lines area, a few hundred metres from the city centre.

One incident that is still etched in memories of the local people is the “Magarmal massacre”, in which 14 persons, including women and children, were killed in an alleged firing by security forces on January 19, 1991.

“The bunker was built after that massacre. I vividly remember how a security force vehicle passed this area, opening indiscriminate fire. So many injured were lying on the road,” Aslam recalled.

“The move to remove it is too little and too late. Peace will not come to Kashmir by removing a handful of such bunkers.”

Police sources said some of the bunkers, including those at Magarmal Bagh, Firdousabad and Shireen Bagh, were 20 years old. They were first manned by the BSF, which was later replaced by the CRPF in 2005.

These bunkers were the prime targets of Srinagar’s ubiquitous stone-throwing brigade during the present unrest.

Even after these bunkers are removed, Srinagar will have dozens of security force camps, bunkers and checkpoints. The CRPF has more than 70 battalions stationed in the state, performing the dual role of maintaining law and order, and counter-insurgency duties along with the state police.

Some 1,274 CRPF men and 2,747 police personnel have been injured during the incidents of stone pelting from May to September 21 in the Valley.

In addition to the removal of bunkers, the government has over the past few days released 49 of 53 students arrested on charges of stone pelting.

“Four others were booked under the public safety act which is being reviewed to pave way for the release,” said a source.