Rajput community mulls migration from Kashmir after killing of member

The recent targeted killing of a Rajput driver by militants has created a sense of fear and uncertainty among members of the tiny community in Kakran village of south Kashmir’s Kulgam district.

On Wednesday evening Satish Kumar Singh, 50, was shot dead at his home by the militants. Since last one month, a string of attacks on members of religious minorities and migrant workers in Kashmir have once again created a fear and panic among the minorities and non-locals.

The Rajput community, who had stayed on in Kashmir like more than 800 families of Kashmiri-speaking Hindus - locally called Pandits for the last 32-years despite militancy are now considering leaving for safer places. There are about 40 Rajput families in Kulgam district, including eight in Kakraan, where the incident happened.

Also Read | Rijiju says security agencies will handle attacks on minorities in Kashmir

Singh, who was working as a private load carrier driver, according to reports, was shot dead by a lone militant at the time of ‘Iftaar’, when the Muslim neighbourhood was busy offering prayers in mosques to break their fast during the holy month of Ramzan.

Singh left behind an aged mother, wife and three daughters in the age group of six to 15 years. “He (Singh) had never harmed anyone. Why was he killed?” Bitu Singh, his younger brother questioned as the family was preparing to perform the last rites.

He said though Muslim neighbours were coming to offer their condolences, they too are helpless before militants. “We are eight Rajput families living in the village and a police guard is deployed at the local temple. We have been living in the village for three generations and stayed back when militancy broke out in early 1990s,” he said.

Also Read | Minority community member shot at in Kashmir

However, the tiny community is now considering moving out of the valley as a poster purportedly issued by militants in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district asking the Hindus to leave Kashmir, has created a wave of fear among the minority community throughout the Valley.

A “threat” letter was circulated at Veeraan village in Baramulla district by a hitherto unknown militant group, named ‘Lashkar-e-Islami’, had threatened the residents of the village where a group of Kashmiri Pandits live.

Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, who is on a two-day visit to J&K, asserted the recent attacks on minorities in Kashmir will be handled by security agencies.

CPI(M) leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, who represented Kulgam assembly constituency from 1996-2018, said that the Rajput community in the area has been neglected by the successive governments.

“Even in the PM Package for Kashmiri migrants, the Rajput community in Kulgam has been left out. I had even written a letter to the Prime Minister to include these families in the package for their upliftment, but so far, there has been no response,” he told DH.

Tarigami said that the Rajput families have been living in Kulgam even before partition in 1947.

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