The Jammu and Kashmir administration has transferred 177 Kashmiri Pandit teachers posted in Srinagar to safer locations amid a rise in targeted killings in the Valley.
Amid an alarming spike in targeted killings in Kashmir, the government has ordered the transfer of 177 Kashmiri Pandit teachers posted in Srinagar to safer locations following demands to be relocated.
The action comes a day after Home Minister Amit Shah chaired a high-level meeting to take stock of the security situation in the restive Union Territory in the wake of a string of attacks targeting the Kashmiri Pandit community and migrants workers.
Scores of Kashmiri Pandits, who were employed under the prime minister’s special package in 2012, have been staging protests threatening mass exodus since the killing of Rahul Bhat, who was shot dead by terrorists on May 12 in the Chadoora area of Budgam district in central Kashmir.
Bhat’s killing sparked protests by around 6,000 employees at various places who demanded their relocation outside the Valley. Since then, the targeted terrorist violence in the Valley has only escalated.
On Thursday, two persons — a bank employee and a brick kiln labourer — were killed in Kashmir while another labourer was injured in two separate incidents. The bank manager was the eighth and the labourer was the ninth victim of targeted killings in Kashmir since May 1.
A woman teacher hailing from the Samba district of the Jammu region was shot dead by terrorists at a school in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district on Tuesday. On May 18, terrorists entered a wine shop at Baramulla in North Kashmir and threw a grenade, killing one person from the Jammu region and injuring three others.
Policeman Saifullah Qadri was shot dead outside his residence in Srinagar on May 24 while television artiste Amreen Bhat was gunned down in Budgam two days later.