- Two government school teachers, including a woman, were shot dead by militants in Eidgah area of the city amid increasing attacks on civilians in Jammu and Kashmir.
- The killing of the teachers, which drew widespread condemnation, took the number of civilians killed in the last five days in Kashmir valley to seven, including four from the minorities.
- The deceased have been identified as Supinder Kour, a resident of Alochi Bagh area of the city here, and Deepak Chand, a resident of Jammu.
- They were working as teachers at Government Boys School, Sangam.
- Supinder 13-year-old daughter, Jasleen Kaur, a class VII student, was in shock.
- “As usual my mother left for school at 9am. She prepared our breakfast. I talked to my mother when she was at school to inform her that my online exams went well,” Jasleen, told.
- “When I called my mother for the second time after 11am, no one responded. She was probably already killed. I don’t know what to do now,” said the teenager, adding that she was informed about her mother’s killing later.
- The masked militants barged into a school in Kashmir, a Muslim majority region in India, demanding to know the religious identity of its teachers.
- Then they separated two non-Muslim teachers and shot them at close range.
- And they came at a time of high tensions that followed the Indian government’s decision to strip Kashmir of its semiautonomous status in 2019 and limit civil liberties in the region.
- The police did not identify the attackers. But the Resistance Front, a little-known militant group operating in Kashmir that emerged after India moved to revoke the region’s autonomy, claimed responsibility for the attack.
- The killings on 7th October in the city of Srinagar were the latest in a series of attacks largely targeting Hindu and Sikh civilians in Kashmir, once again raising alarm about the rise of a militancy that drove out religious minority groups from the region nearly three decades ago.
- The police in the region say that suspected militants have killed 27 civilians this year, seven of them — including three Muslims — in the past 10 days.
- The victims have included a local pharmacist, a taxi driver, and a member of a youth group.
- A rebel group known as the Resistance Front (TRF) – associated with one of the main Islamic militant groups operating in Kashmir, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) – claimed responsibility for two of the civilian killings last week, which included a Hindu chemist and a taxi driver.
- However, no groups have taken responsibility of the assassination of the two teachers on 7th
- In 2019, in a move that angered and frustrated the citizens of Kashmir, the region was unilaterally stripped of its semi-autonomous status and brought fully under the control of the Indian government.
- Many Kashmiris feared it would lead to demographic change in one of India’s only Muslim-majority states.
- Since then, militant rebels in the region have intensified their attacks on non-locals living and working in Kashmir, as well as leaders of the BJP.
- About 80 civilians have been killed in such attacks since the region’s autonomy was scrapped, including at least 28 this year alone.
- Mehbooba Mufti, a former chief minister of the region, blamed the Modi government for the situation. She said that the government’s claim of building a new Kashmir “has actually turned it into a hellhole”.
- Hindus and Sikhs living in Kashmir now fear they are being targeted. Kour’s neighbour Ravinder Singh, also a Sikh, said: “It has become difficult for us to stay here now. Why was she killed? What was her fault? We need guarantees from the majority community here.”
Q) Which article empowered J&K’s state legislature to define permanent residents and provide special rights to them?
- Article 370
- Article 35
- Article 35 A
- Article 1
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