Kashmiri Pandit killed in Jammu & Kashmir, 7th since 2020

SRINAGAR: A terrorist shot dead 43-year-old Kashmiri Pandit farmer Puran Krishan Bhat outside his home in Choudharygund village of south Kashmir’s Shopian district Saturday morning, triggering protests in Jammu against the latest targeted attack on the community.
DIG Sujit Kumar said Kashmir Freedom Fighter (KFF), the proxy name of a terrorist outfit, claimed responsibility for the attack on Bhat, who is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.The area has been cordoned off and a hunt launched to nab the assailant.
Bhat was the seventh Kashmiri Pandit killed since 2020. The killing 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.

The Kashmiri Pandits have been protesting in Jammu for the past 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 district, 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, we feel 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 people are dead and lives upended, but “this government is ignoring our pleas to transfer us out” of the Valley.

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 (for the lapse). He had gone out on a scooter and just returned to his home (when he was fatally attacked).”
Kumar said in case of any lapse, action will be taken against the guards and officials in charge of the area.
In August, terrorists shot dead Sunil Kumar Nath, 45, and wounded and his younger brother in a sneak attack when the siblings were tending their orchard at Chotigam in Shopian district. Chotigam is a predominantly Kashmiri Pandit village and people own large orchards of apples and other fruits, while some are chemists.
Lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha and political parties condemned Puran Bhat’s murder. Sinha said the attack “is a dastardly act of cowardice”. NC denounced the “brazen and cowardly attack”, while PDP accused the J&K government of “hubris” for “turning a blind eye to the plight” of Kashmiri Pandits living and working in the Valley.
BJP general secretary (organisation) Ashok Koul condemned the “barbaric” killing and offered his condolences to the family. He said: “These anti-national elements will never be successful…these attacks are aimed at disturbing peace in the region.”
(with inputs Sanjay Khajuria in Jammu)