In Jammu, BJP leaders face angry KP protestors
Police fire teargas shells in Kashmir to disperse KPs procession
BUNTY MAHAJAN
JAMMU, MAY 13: Even as UT Government constituted a Special Investigation Team to probe the killing of Rahul Bhat inside Chadoora Tehsil office and announced a government job for his widow Meenakshi, angry Kashmiri Pandit protestors confronted BJP leaders here in Jammu accusing them of sending migrant community members only to get killed.
In Kashmir, police fired teargas shells and resorted to lathicharge to disperse their mob who were marching towards Srinagar Airport in protest over the killing of Rahul Bhat.
“In the name of jobs under PM package, you have made us sacrificial lambs,’’ an agitated Kashmiri Pandit youth told BJP’s J&K president Ravinder Raina as he visited the Ban Talab cremation ground to attend Rahul Bhat’s funeral. Former Deputy Chief Minister Kavinder Gupta among others was accompanying him.
“What you have done for us,’’ another asked, adding that there is no security for them in the Valley. “The government has failed to protect us,’’ he added.
The mood was tense at the cremation ground, with angry protestors demanding the Central Government to take one final action against Pakistan. They also raised slogans against Pakistan and later blocked the road for some time.
Rahul’s father Bitta Ji Bhat demanded an enquiry into the matter, saying that the killers first asked him his name and then opened fire. He was on leave, but he was specially called to the office that day, one of the relative said, adding that heads must roll as it was a security lapse.
Back home in Durga Nagar, Rahul’s widow Meenakshi said that her world has been destroyed. “I had talked to him only ten minutes earlier and gone to attend the birthday function of his colleague’s daughter,’’ she recalled, adding that Rahul was to join her there.
Nearly 6,000 migrant Kashmiri Pandit youth have been posted in the Valley under PM’s employment package. Of them, approximately 1,000 are staying in secure government accommodation and the rest left to stay in private rented accommodation putting their lives at risk.
Officials, however, claim that all these employees will be provided secure government accommodation by year end as construction of residential flats for them was in progress at various places.
Meanwhile, opposition parties criticised both the Central and UT government for failure in protecting Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley.
IkkJutt president Ankur Sharma alleged that minority community members in Kashmir under employment packages have been handed over as “strategic hostages’’ in view of Indian State’s denial of Hindu genocide and hostility towards nationalists in J&K.
