Govt ignoring pleas for Jammu transfer, say Kashmiri Pandits

SRINAGAR: A terrorist shot dead Kashmiri Pandit farmer Puran Krishan Bhat outside his home in south Kashmir's Shopian on Saturday morning. The area has been cordoned off and a hunt launched to nab the assailant, reports Saleem Pandit.
Bhat is the seventh Kashmiri Pandit to be killed since 2020. The killing has reopened old wounds and disrupted efforts to restore trust in the government, especially among members of the community who returned to the Valley as part of a government resettlement plan that gave jobs and housing.
Kashmiri Pandits have been protesting in Jammu for the last five months following the killing of revenue clerk Rahul Bhat Rahul Bhat, 35, at the Chadoora tehsil office in Budgam district on May 12.The protests intensified after Rajni Bala, a 36-year-old Dalit teacher from Jammu's Samba, was shot dead outside her government school in Kulgam district on May 31.
"Our worst fears have once again come true with the latest killing. We have already fled the Valley. Otherwise, many of us would have been dead by now," said a protester, demanding relocation of Kashmiri Pandits government employees from Kashmir to Jammu. He said, "This government is ignoring our pleas to transfer us out."
The latest man to die, Puran Bhat, was from a small group of people that stayed behind when tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandit families fled the Valley during the peak of separatist terrorism in early 1990s. He was among around 455 Kashmiri Pandits living in Shopian, where authorities said adequate security is in place at "clusters of the community".
DIG Sujit Kumar said: "There was security, our guard, for this cluster. We are looking at the reason. He had gone out on a scooter and just returned to his home." Kumar said. Lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha said the attack "is a dastardly act of cowardice".
(with inputs from Sanjay Khajuria in Jammu)