Kashmiri Pandit’s Killing Triggers Violent Protests; What Actually Happened?

Jammu: A day after a Kashmiri Pandit was shot dead, violent protests erupted in Jammu & Kashmir’s Budgam district on Friday, forcing police to resort to lathicharge and use tear gas shells.

Government employees and families of Kashmiri Pandits raised slogans against Jammu & Kashmir Lt Gov. Manoj Sinha over the targeted killing of Rahul Bhat as well as recent attacks on other Kashmiri Pandits.

In a cold-blooded murder, terrorists barged into the Tehsil office in Chadoora town on Thursday and fired at Bhat, a government employee who worked with the revenue department in Budgam.

Bhat was rushed to a Srinagar hospital where he succumbed to serious injuries some time later.

Kashmir Tigers, a terror group, took responsibility for the attack.

Bhat had got the job of a clerk under the special employment package for migrants in 2010-11.

ANI quoted Amit, a Kashmiri Pandit, as saying, “LG administration should provide us security, else we will resort to mass resignation from our respective posts.”

Bhat’s family believes that he was killed for coming from a minority family.

“First, they asked who Rahul Bhat is & then they shot him. We want inquiry. There was a Police Station 100 ft away. There should have been security at the office but nobody came. They should check CCTV footage,” Bhat’s father told ANI.

He demanded a thorough inquiry, questioning how the attack could take place when there was a police station 100 ft away from where his son was shot.

Bhat’s wife wondered how did the terrorists knew about him.

“He used to say everyone behaves nicely with him & nobody can harm him. Yet nobody protected him… they (terrorists) must’ve asked someone about him, otherwise how would they have known,” Bhat’s widow said.

Bhat’s last rites were conducted in Jammu’s Bantalab on Friday morning in the presence of ADGP Jammu Mukesh Singh, Divisional Commissioner Ramesh Kumar and Deputy Commissioner Avny Lavasa.

Vivek Agnihotri’s recently-released film ‘The Kashmir Files’, which is about the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley in early 1990s, has split opinion down the middle.