Hindu man shot dead, brother injured in Kashmir targeted shooting
Srinagar, India, Aug 16 (EFE).- Suspected militants shot dead a man from the minority Hindu faith and injured his brother in a fresh targeted attack in India-administered Kashmir on Tuesday.
Police said the attack took place in the southern Shopian district, some 50 km (nearly 30 miles) from the largest city of Srinagar.
Police said the armed men shot the brother in an apple orchard.
“One of them, Sunil, died and the other, Pintu, suffered injurues,” a police officer told EFE.
In a brief statement, the police blamed militants for the attack.
“The injured person has been shifted to a hospital,” the police statement said.
Residents told EFE that the security forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation to identify the attackers.
Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha, a federal government-appointed official to run the local government, condemned the “despicable terror attack on civilians in Shopian.”
“The attack deserves strongest condemnation from everyone. Terrorists responsible for barbaric act will not be spared,” Sinha tweeted.
It is the second attack in Kashmir on minority Hindus in less than 24 hours.
A Hindu man was injured on Monday evening after suspected militants hurled a grenade in Gopalpora village of central Kashmir’s Budgam district.
On Sunday, a policeman was killed in the old Srinagar city area when a security party came under fire from militants.
The Kashmir Hindus, locally called Pandits, were among over 76,000 families that left the Kashmir Valley in 1989-90 when an armed rebellion started in the region disputed between India and Pakistan.
At least 800 families from the minority group still reside in the Muslim-majority region, says the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS), a group of Hindus.
Since August 2019, militants have targeted Pandits and non-Kashmiris, after the federal government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party abrogated the region’s semi-autonomous status.
The controversial move sparked apprehensions that the government was trying to change the demography of the Muslim region. EFE
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