Indian bank employee shot dead in Kashmir

SRINAGAR: Assailants fatally shot a Hindu bank manager in Indian-administered Kashmir on Thursday, said police, who blamed militants fighting against Indian rule for the attack.

Police described the shooting in southern Kulgam district as a “terror incident’’ and launched a search operation for the attackers. The bank manager, Vijay Kumar from India’s Rajasthan state, died at a hospital following the shooting.

CCTV footage circulating on social media shows a masked assailant walk into the bank and fire shots at Kumar with what appears to be a handgun.

After that killing, Hindu government employees staged protests in several areas, demanding the government relocate them from Kashmir to safer areas in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region.

Hundreds of Hindus who had returned to the region after 2010 as part of a government resettlement plan that provided them with jobs and housing fled the Kashmir Valley after the killing of Bala, according to Kashmiri Hindu activists. Some 4,000 Kashmiri Hindus, who are locally known as Pandits, have been recruited for government jobs under the programme.

An attacker shot the Hindu bank employee, who moved from the western state of Rajasthan a week earlier, in his office with a pistol in the Kulgam area, a police officer told AFP.

“#Injured bank employee namely Vijay Kumar #succumbed to his injuries at hospital,” police said on Twitter.

On Tuesday a Hindu female schoolteacher was also shot dead by suspected anti-India militants in the same area.

Last week suspected militants also shot dead three off-duty policemen and a television actress, all Muslims, in three separate assassination-style attacks.

Days before that, a Hindu government employee was shot dead inside his office by gunmen who police said belonged to Lashkar-e-Toiba.

The Resistance Front (TRF) rebel group claimed responsibility for Kumar’s death on its Telegram channel, though it later deleted the post. The claim could not be independently verified.

Last year TRF claimed responsibility for a string of other killings including of policemen, minority Hindus and a female Sikh teacher, accusing them of working for the security forces.

Police later said all militants responsible for the killings were “eliminated”.