Another targeted killing, another Pandit shot dead in Kashmir

The victim was identified as Sanjay Sharma, a resident of the Achan area in Pulwama

In another targeted killing, a Kashmiri Pandit (Hindu) was shot dead by militants in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district on Sunday.

Police said the militants fired upon the man, identified as Sanjay Sharma working as an armed guard in his village, in the Achan area of Pulwama in the morning. He was rushed to a hospital where he died.

“Terrorists fired upon one civilian from minority namely Sanjay Sharma S/O Kashinath Sharma R/O Achan Pulwama while on way to local market. He was shifted to hospital however, he succumbed to injuries. There was Armed guard in his village. Area cordoned off. Details shall follow,” the Jammu and Kashmir Police tweeted.

Reports said immediately after the incident police and security forces rushed to the area to nab the attackers. This was the first targeted killing of any minority community member in the Valley this year.

The attack - the latest in a grisly sequence of targeted killings - has created a sense of fear among the minority community members in the Valley. Since October 2021 militants have stepped up attacks on Pandits, migrant labourers and non-locals in Kashmir.

The targeted killings has once again made it amply clear that militants still lurk and can carry attacks, albeit on soft-targets. Such incidents are being repeated at intermittent intervals by the militants to show their presence and challenge the BJP government’s claims of peace in Kashmir after the abrogation of erstwhile state’s special status under Article 370.

Over 4500 Pandits, who have returned to Kashmir in the last more than a decade to take up government jobs under the Prime Minister’s special package, are vulnerable to targeted attacks. There are also hundreds of Hindu employees from Jammu recruited under the Schedule Caste (SC) quota and posted in the Valley.

The Pandit and the SC employees have been protesting for the last several months demanding relocation to the safer environs of Jammu.

Last week, The Resistance Front (TRF), an offshoot of proscribed Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) outfit issued a threat against the Global Kashmiri Pandit Conclave in New Delhi. Threatening the Pandits, the blacklisted blog "Kashmir Fight" said that conclaves like this cannot save them from the "wrath of resistance fighters.”

The much-publicized Global Kashmiri Pandit conclave is being held in New Delhi on February 25 and 26.