Protests over killing of employee escalate
SRINAGAR/JAMMU: Widespread protests over the killing of a 36-year-old revenue official from the Kashmiri Pandit community continued across Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday as scores of Pandits held demonstrations outside transit camps and blocked main roads, demanding their relocation to safer places outside Kashmir valley.
A delegation of the Kashmiri Pandits on Saturday also called on former chief minister and president of the Peoples Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), Farooq Abdullah, at his residence to seek protection for the community. “The Kashmiri Pandits are in a state of panic. They wanted that the PAGD leadership should take up this issue with Lt Governor Manoj Sinha. The PAGD has sought an appointment with the Lt Governor,” said PAGD spokesperson Yusuf Tarigami.
Terrorists barged into the office of a tehsildar in Budgam district on May 12 and shot Bhat, who worked as a revenue officer. He later succumbed to injuries. The 36-year-old was working in Budgam for the past 10 years after his appointment under a special package to rehabilitate Pandits.
Bhat’s killing is the latest in a string of targeted attacks on civilians over the past four months. The attack raised questions over the security of more than 4,000 Kashmiri Pandits, who have been living in transit camps in various parts of Kashmir after they were given government jobs under a special employment package launched in 2010. The community was driven out of the Valley by rising militancy in the early 1990s.
Protests against the killing continued to rage across the region.
In Budgam’s Sheikhpora transit camp, which houses the families of Bhat and other Pandits, over a hundred employees sat under a large makeshift tent amid scorching heat to protest the killing and press for the acceptance of their demands. “This is the failure of both the central as well as the Union Territory governments. This is the ninth killing (of minority community members). We are facing huge problems, but there is no redressal,” Vimal, a Kashmiri pandit employee, told news agency PTI at the camp.
A posse of security forces personnel stood guard outside the camp, while protesters accused the troops of preventing them from taking out a protest march.
“The transit camps have become like detention centres. Nobody is allowed to come out...,” another protester added.
At the Press Colony in Srinagar, scores of government employees from the community gathered carrying “We want Justice” placards and shouting slogans against the administration and the Bharatiya Janata Party. “If the situation is fine then why is there a targeted killing of a particular section? Something surely is amiss,” said an employee at the protest.
In Baramulla district, a brief clash broke out between protesters and police after a few people attempted to move out of their colony in Veerwan. They wanted to join the protests in Srinagar.
“The situation is normal. The Pandits wanted to move out of the colony for a protest, which we did not allow,” said a police official in Baramulla district.