Punish the killers: Slain J&K school principal Supinder Kour's kin seek justice

Reports said a few hundred people silently walked by foot from Aloochibagh to the civil secretariat with the body of the deceased

Relatives, neighbours and friends of Supinder Kour, a school principal who was shot dead by militants along with her colleague in Srinagar on Thursday, staged a sit-in outside civil secretariat here on Friday, demanding justice and punishment for the killers.

The mourners were also joined by some members of the majority community. Reports said a few hundred people, mostly from the Sikh community, silently walked by foot from Aloochibagh to the civil secretariat along with the body of the deceased.

“The family of Kour carried her body on a stretcher and when they reached the civil secretariat, they staged a silent-sit-in,” witnesses said.

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Senior police officers reached the spot and persuaded them to take the body to Batamaloo cremation ground for her last rites. Before proceeding to the cremation ground, the protestors demanded stern punishment for her killers.

In the wake of four targeted killings of minorities in Srinagar in the last three days, some Kashmiri Pandit organisations have alleged that the administration did not take adequate measures to ensure their safety despite intelligence inputs.

50-year-old Kour, principal of Government Boys Higher Secondary school in Eidgah area of Srinagar, and Deepak Chand, a teacher at the same school, were shot dead inside the school premises by terrorists on Thursday.

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The Resistance Front (TRF), which police say is the frontal organisation of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), claimed responsibility for the attack saying the teachers were killed for their role in getting students to participate in a “function at school” on Independence Day.

On Tuesday evening, 68-year-old Makhan Lal Bindroo, a prominent Kashmiri Pandit businessman and the owner of a pharmacy in Srinagar's Iqbal Park, was shot at from point-blank. Just an hour later, a street vendor from Bihar was shot dead in similar circumstances in Lal Bazar area on the outskirts of Srinagar.

J&K police chief Dilbagh Singh termed these attacks as an attempt to defame Muslims of Kashmir. “Killing innocent civilians including teachers is a move to attack and damage the age-old tradition of communal harmony and brotherhood in Kashmir,” he said.

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