Bank manager, laborer shot dead in Kashmir

By Hilal Mir

SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir (AA) - A bank manager and a laborer were shot dead while another laborer sustained gunshot wounds in two separate attacks Thursday by suspected militants in Jammu and Kashmir.

CCTV footage that went viral on social media showed a masked gunman firing a couple of rounds from a pistol into Vijay Kumar, a 26-year-old manager at a bank in Kashmir’s Kulgam district. Kumar died en route to a hospital.

Hailing from India’s Rajasthan state, Kumar had gotten married recently and was posted at the bank branch only four days earlier.

During the night, suspected militants shot at and injured two laborers who worked at a brick kiln in Budgam district. One of them, identified as Dilkhush Kumar from India’s Bihar state, succumbed to his injuries at a hospital.

Such killings and attacks have become routine and have intensified over the past few months. They have been taking place since Aug. 5, 2019, when the Hindu nationalist Indian government scrapped a law that allowed Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir to have a separate constitution and flag.

The abrogation of another law on the same day that barred outsiders from holding government employment or buying properties and the introduction of numerous other laws and changes relating to minerals and land use, the demarcation of local legislative assembly seats and the definition of domiciles has raised fears among Muslims that they would be reduced to a minority and disempowered politically.

Soon after the abrogation of autonomy, in the first wave of such killings of outsiders, militants targeted mostly Muslim workers and laborers from various Indian states. Later, targets included Hindu workers, government employees and businessmen from both Jammu and Kashmir and various parts of India.

These killings have created intense panic, the most among Pandits, the ethnic Kashmiri Hindus who were the privileged “state subjects” of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state along with nearly 29% other Hindus of the disputed region.

Around 150,000-200,000 of them had migrated en masse in 1990 to the neighboring Hindu-majority Jammu province when the armed anti-India insurgency erupted. Thousands stayed back but gradually started migrating to Jammu and other parts of India as the insurgency lingered on.

But after a relatively peaceful period in the early 2000s, the Indian government started pushing for their return by providing them with government jobs and building guarded apartment complexes for them.

Several members of the community have been killed in the past few months, forcing the community to deliver an ultimatum to the local government that they would migrate en masse again if they are not relocated to safer locations. They have held several protests over the past few days.

The killing of a Hindu woman teacher, Rajni Bala, on Tuesday saw Pandits protest again. Fearing their exodus, the government locked the gates of the apartment complexes, prompting the fuming residents to resort to sloganeering and demanding their relocation.

India’s Home Minister Amit Shah and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval are holding an important meeting about these developments Friday in New Delhi.

-Disputed region

Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full. A small sliver of Kashmir is also held by China.

Since they were partitioned in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought three wars – in 1948, 1965 and 1971. Two of them were over Kashmir. Indian and Pakistani troops have also fought intermittently in the northern Siachen region since 1984. A cease-fire took effect in 2003.

Some Kashmiri groups in Jammu and Kashmir have been fighting against Indian rule for independence or for unification with neighboring Pakistan. According to several human rights organizations, thousands have reportedly been killed in the conflict since 1989.