NEW DELHI, Oct 15: Suspected militants shot dead a Kashmiri Pandit in Chowdhary Gund area in South Kashmir’s Shopian district south Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday afternoon.
Preliminary reports suggested that the victim was fired upon by militants on the lawns of his residential house. The police, however, said the victim was on his way to an orchard when militants fired at him.
The deceased has been identified as Puran Krishan Bhat. He was critically injured in the firing and lost his life during treatment in a hospital.
“Terrorists fired upon a civilian (minority) Shri Puran Krishan Bhat while he was on way to orchard in Chowdhary Gund Shopian. He was immediately shifted to hospital for treatment where he succumbed. Area cordoned off. Search in progress,” the Jammu and Kashmir Police tweeted.
Bhat, a Kashmiri Hindu, did not leave the Valley even when militancy peaked in the 1990s. Mr Bhat has two school going children – a girl who studies in class 7 and a younger boy who is in class 5 – a relative said. “He didn’t even step out of his house, used to be indoors. We are very scared,” he added.
The attack on Bhat has come just days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Gujarat that the Kashmir issue has been resolved.
“Another KP (Kashmiri pandit) non-migrant killed at Chowdhary Gund in Shopian… despite our tweet on 13th October but nothing has changed on ground zero. It (is) also a message to Shri Amit Shah that everything is (not) ok in Kashmir,” tweeted Kashmiri Pandit Sangarsh Samiti (KPSS), an organisation representing Kashmiri Pandits who did not leave the Valley.
The KPSS president Sanjay Tickoo alleged that the deputy commissioner of Shopian and senior superintendent of police (Shopian) are “pressuring the victim’s family to conduct the last rites as soon as possible as they have to show normalcy in the Valley.”
This comes barely a couple of months after another Kashmiri Pandit was shot dead by terrorists at an apple orchard in Shopian district. His brother was also injured in the firing. The victim was identified as Sunil Kumar. His brother Pintu Kumar was injured in the attack that happened on August 16. The August attack was claimed by ‘Kashmir Freedom Fighters’, an offshoot of Al Badr, in a statement that said the Pandit brothers had been targeted for encouraging people to take part in the ‘Tiranga rallies’ in the run-up to Independence Day celebrations.
Sources had then said the government, based on inputs from the country’s top body for intelligence sharing ‘Multi-Agency Centre’, was bracing for more such violence. “There are regular inputs which suggest that a large quantity of small arms and ammunition has been smuggled from across the border, and it’s a clear indicator that such targeted killing and isolated cases of grenade throwing will see an increase in coming days,” a senior officer in the Home Ministry has said then.
Militants have indulged in targeted killing of the Hindus, the minority community in Kashmir, this year, which included a school teacher and a government employee.
Kashmir has been witnessing a series of targeted killings since October last year. Many of the victims have been migrant workers or Kashmiri Pandits.
In October last year, seven civilians were killed in five days — among them a Kashmiri Pandit, a Sikh, and two migrant Hindus.
In May, terrorists barged into the tehsildar’s office in Budgam and shot dead 36-year-old Rahul Bhat, a Kashmiri Pandit who received a government job under a package for the community that was forced to flee the Valley during the wave of militancy in the 1990s. The killing triggered a wave of protests by the minority community. Kashmiri Pandits held demonstrations during which they raised slogans under the central government and questioned if they brought them back to the Valley to get killed.
(Manas Dasgupta)
