Yet again, Kashmir is rocked by killings at the onset of Ramzan

Once again, unidentified terrorists, widely believed to be the separatist guerrillas, have greeted the onset of the holy month of Ramzan with bloodshed in the Kashmir valley. In the four separate terror strikes, one head constable of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has been killed while one CRPF jawan, four non-local workers and a resident Kashmiri Pandit have been injured in the first two days of the holy month of fasting.

According to authoritative sources, two suspected terrorists appeared at the pharmacy of one Bal Krishen aka Sonu at his residential village of Chotigam, near Harmain, in the South Kashmir district of Shopian at 7:30 pm on Monday. One of them, armed with a pistol, fired upon Sonu at point blank range. With three gunshot wounds on his body, he was quickly evacuated and rushed to District Hospital Shopian. On examination, doctors referred him to Army’s 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar. He was stable and responding to the treatment late on Monday night.

Most of the Kashmiri Pandit families from Chotigam and the once Pandit-dominated Harmain village have migrated to Jammu, Delhi and other places in the early 1990s. However, three families of the minority community have been continuously living at Chotigam without any Police or paramilitary protection.

Bal Krishen alias Sonu is the second Kashmiri Pandit chemist after Makhan Lal Bindru in Srinagar who has been attacked by terrorists in the last six months. Bindru was among over a dozen members of the minority community and non-local workers who were attacked and left dead or injured in Kashmir in October 2021.

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