Puran Krishan Bhat, a Kashmiri Pandit, was shot dead outside his house on October 15. (File)
As a fallout of recent targeted attacks on Kashmiri Pandits, at least 11 families of the community have quietly left Kashmir Valley to shift to Jammu.
These families had stayed put in Shopian district's Chaudharygund and Chotigam villages – where two Pandits were killed by terrorists in the last two months – even when the unrest had first begun around 1990.
Their homes are now padlocked. Locals say only one Pandit woman is left of the eight families in Chaudharygund; and she too is moving out.
In this village, a Pandit named Puran Krishan Bhat was shot dead by terrorists outside his ancestral house on October 15.
Ghulam Hassan Wagay, a Muslim resident of the village who has served in the army, said fear is the reason. “But before they left, we helped them to harvest their apple produce,” he said, adding that the boxes would be sent to Jammu, where the families have gone to live with relatives for now.
“I feel very sad that they had leave their homes. A few of us even accompanied them,” he further said.
“I stand guarantee; not a single apple will be lost. We will protect it,” he added.
Three days after Puran Krishan Bhat was killed, on October 18, two migrant workers were killed in a grenade attack while they were asleep in their rented accommodation in Shopian.
Two months before that, a Kashmiri Pandit was shot dead by terrorists at an apple orchard in Shopian's Chotigam village. The three Pandit families here, too, have left.
Sources had said the government was bracing for more such violence.
Targeted attacks on minority Hindus -- Kashmiri Pandits, predominantly -- have increased ever since the Narendra Modi-led BJP government revoked the region's special constitutional status under Article 370, and divided it into two centrally-governed UTs, carving Ladakh out of the erstwhile province of Jammu and Kashmir. There was opposition to the move as many saw it as a ploy to effect demographic change in the Muslim-majority region.