Rise Of Militant Attacks On Civilians In Jammu And Kashmir

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 7^th 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 7^th
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?