Gunmen entered the Tehsil office in Chadoora town and shot at Rahul Bhat, a clerk. He succumbed to his injuries in the hospital
File image of Rahul Bhat. Twitter/ @MattLaemon
A government employee belonging to the Kashmir Pandit community was shot dead by suspected militants at his office in the Chadoora area of Budgam district of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, officials said.
The gunmen entered the Tehsil office in Chadoora town and shot at Rahul Bhat, a clerk, the officials said.
They said Bhat, who was residing in a migrant colony at Sheikhpura in Budgam district, was shifted to a hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.
The Kashmir Zone police took to Twitter to report about the case:
After the incident, security forces launched a search operation in the area.
Thursday’s attack is the latest in a series of targeted attacks on migrant workers and local minorities that have been on in Kashmir for the past eight months. The targeted killings had started in October.
Last month several Kashmiri Pandit organisations had raised an alarm over the renewed threats against members of the minority community and the targeted killings of non-locals and Hindus by suspected militants.
Sanjay Tickoo, who heads the Kashmiri Pandit Sangarash Samiti (KPSS), had said the government, in the past three years, has again failed in ensuring the security of minorities living in the Kashmir Valley. “It indicates that Kashmiri minorities will again have to leave Kashmir Valley due to failure of Kashmiri society as well as administration,” Tickoo said.
Tickoo, who represents the Pandit families that decided not to migrate in the 1990s, warned that situation in the Kashmir valley was returning to that of three decades earlier. Around 800 Pandit families had stayed on then as militancy broke out in the Valley.
With input from agencies
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