World Notes INDIA

"Our agony has ended," said a relieved Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, the Home Minister in India's newly elected government, as he was reunited last week with his daughter Rubia. The 22-year-old medical intern had been kidnaped five days earlier by Muslim extremists agitating for the secession of Jammu and Kashmir state.

The government won the woman's freedom by capitulating to the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, which had demanded freedom for five comrades detained under antiterrorism measures. As news of the settlement spread, supporters of the pro-Pakistan J.K.L.F. thronged the streets of Srinagar, the state's summer capital, hoisting Pakistani flags and shouting slogans. When the crowd turned violent, seven people were killed in skirmishes with police, bringing the death toll to 85 over the past 16 months.

Sayeed, India's first Muslim Home Minister, has vowed to bring peace to his country's only predominantly Muslim state. Late last week the government did so by force, slapping a curfew on all major towns in the Kashmir valley.